Tag: minimalist

You Don’t Have to Pay To Play

I had a great win on the ol’ eBay the other night.  I meantioned at one point that I downsized all of my photography gear a few years ago and have been using the Canon G15 for a while now. I really love​ that camera but don’t like that it is missing an external mic port and a real viewfinder. 

I didn’t want to buy another camera with detachable lenses so I did a little research and found that the Nikon P7800 had a usable view finder and a mic port. This was the one to have, so I fired up my thinking mill and planned what it would take to own that camera. 

Step one, find out how much it is new and used to get an idea of what is considered a deal. Done. 

New, it was over $600 and we already know I’m not looking for a new one.  Used price was $400, consistently.  So I wanted to find one for under that. But I couldn’t. 

I went to Amazon and paid the $390 to be done with it. Then, just for the hell of it I went back on eBay and happened to see an auction ending soon near $300. I though that if I could win this one for anything less than $400, I’d be saving, so I threw down $316.90 and was immediately outbid. Like a squirrel trying to get out of a garbage can I tried to flip in another bid. I was too slow and lost the auction, at a final price of like $320. I was pissed that I missed that chance to save $80, but just for the hell of it, I looked to see if there were any other auctions going on. I happened to look at the right time, because a guy had just posted his camera for $200,  buy-it-now style, which man’s no auction, you just get it. I thoufht, it must have been for parts or something? That was half the price of what they had been going for. 

Fast forward three seconds and I bought it.  It is home now and doing just fine. We actually recorded a video on it this morning for mother’s day. 

Now my G15 is listed on eBay and has 10 bids on it and two days left at $158. I’m expecting that one to go for around $200, which would mean that I was able to slip right into the camera I wanted, for nothing but a little time and research. I got lucky on this one though. 

I ended up cancelling the amazon order of course. 

The point is to make sure you shop around thoroughly before making a purchase. 

Renting vs Buying

Understanding the concept of depreciation and resale value can help you decide whether you should buy, rent, or borrow something. 

Let’s use a tile saw for example. The big box stores rent them for about $40/day. A quick search shows that you can buy one for between $50 and $300 from various easy to access stores. You want to ask yourself how often you are going to use one of these things and​ do you want to store it?

Some of you may already be thinking that buying one would be the way to go here because you could sell it after and still beat the rental cost. This is a good thought, but there might be a better option, or two. 

Clearly, if you know someone with one, you could ask them to borrow it and give them some beers, wine, whatever. If that’s not an option, then looking used is probably your best bet. 

Knowing that the second you use that new saw, it’s value will plummet, you will still be losing out on max value here. Fast depreciation is a problem with new purchases.  I wouldn’t imagine it would be hard to sell, but who knows. 

Now, searching on Craigslist shows that there are a bunch of used units ranging from $30-300. Some appear to be industrial units but keep in mind, these are the depreciated values here. After a one time use, you will likely be able to sell it for damn bear what you paid or possibly even more because someone else took​ the depreciation hit, just like with cars. 

I’d go for that cheap $30 one and try to sell it for $40. 

Likely Results? -$10 to +$10 (buying used and selling) vs -$40 (rent) vs -$60 to -$300 (new) vs -$20 to -$100 (buying new and selling). 

Ok, so i made up those numbers, but the point is that you have more options than buying or renting. Always remember that you can sell something after you’re done with it to recoup some, or more than all of your money. 

Don’t underestimate the value in selling things that you have no use for anymore.