Is the Cost of Vintage Gear Rising?

[Sitkadiver]

So, on another board I posted that it seems every late winter/spring there is a drop in the cost of vintage and used gear.

I am not seeing that this year!!! I've been keeping my eye out for a HW GL and the only one on E-Bay is in the triple digits already. And forget trying to buy another Deluxe to modify, they want 80 - 100 bucks for those bad boys.

I wonder if The Scuba Museum's diaphragms are driving up the price? Maybe the price will go down when the XTC's and Mossback Mk V's hit the market.....

 

[Ed Palma]

Well, hard to really fathom the reason, but it WAS predicted that HW prices would be higher with the advent of the silicone diaphragms Of course one way to check is to verify with Rob if there is a corresponding volume of sales. Rob?

 

[herman]

The average price does seem to be going up. When I started looking several years ago, a DA was in the $75-100 range, now it seems they mostly hit $150-200....with the occasional moron paying $300+. I understand from the old timers, 5-10 years ago a DA on eBay was $25 or so. I really think a lot of this is the price of success. With all the parts necessary to restore many of the regs readily availably at a reasonable cost and with the increase in board activity, the interest is growing. With growing interest the demand grows as well. I have seen the cost of lesser known regs (i.e.- no or limited parts availability) increasing as well but it did lag behind USD/Voit. I suspect this is somewhat of a coattail effect- USD/Voits regs go for more so Dacors "have" to be worth more even though parts and service are not available for them. First time buyers running up the price because they don’t have a good idea of what they are getting.

IMO- The XTC's or whatever they decide to call them will not have much impact on sales. While it promises to be a very good upgrade to existing regs, I don't see it increasing sales of regs themselves much if any. I suspect a lot of DH divers will want them so sales of the upgrade will likely be pretty good but that is going to be to divers who already own a DH and want to improve it.
The Mossback will not likely have much impact as well, a few regs will be sold to convert but it's a fairly expensive upgrade and somewhat of a difficult sale to someone who does not already dive DHs (and most likely has a DH to convert). That is not a comment on the MB itself, just my opinion of it's impact on DH sales.

There are other projects in the consideration stage that may have some impact on prices. Stay tuned, there is a lot of scribbling on envelopes going on in the back rooms and bars of the vintage.....maybe I should say double hose……community.

DH diving is on a comeback and we are on the leading edge of the wave....I do so love the looks and comments they invoke, esp from new and clueless instructors.

 

[spectrum]

There are several factors in play here.

1st, over the past 7+ years there has been a steady growth in parts availability though the efforts of VDH, VSS and the Scuba Museum. This means that what were wall hangings is now once again potential dive gear.

2nd, The generation that grew up in that era now have discretionary cash to sink into toys.

3rd, and this applies to a lot of things today. Money is tight and what people were happy to give away or take lunch money for now is a cash raising effort. I have seen the same in my winter past time of collecting vintage snow blowers. In this case we also have buyers willing to pay real money for 20-40 year old machines as there is a huge gap to the cost of new. With dive gear, especially most regulators purchasing and refurbishing can be even money or more.

Nostalgia aside new greenfield double hose gear is starting to look like a real possibility. It will be interesting to see what that does for the vintage units. Not all divers desiring a double hose rig are dedicated to it being vintage. As it is, advances are allowing some evolution from the classic designs.

 

[herman]

Pete, I am not familure with the Greenfield dh. A google search did not turn up anything. Do you have any more info or a link?

Personally I would love to see a new, modern DH produced but it has to be along the lines of the old regs. The attempt by AL a while back is a perfect example of how not to do it. It was obviously cobbled together with as many off the self parts as they could and it resulted in a POS that pretty much no one liked....the real pitty is AL already has (had?) the Mentor in production for sale to the military. All they had to do was to replace the hoses and mouthpiece with a better design.....the old one would have been perfect...and sell it. Odds are it would have sold if they kept the price reasonable.

 

[Sitkadiver]

Herman,

I couldn't agree more with you. Aqua Lung could sell the living daylights out of the Mentor. I was thinking that as I read your first 2 sentences, then it was like you had read my mind.

I'm under the impression that the Mossback MkV and "XTC" are going to be whole regs, not just 1st stages that get added to the body. However, I missed the leaked photos and don't have any first hand knowledge. I'm curious to see happens, but whatever happens, I'm still super-happy with my Pheonix.

To keeps things in perspective, I was glad to confirm I wasn't imagining the price jump.

 

[herman]

I don't have any idea on the Mossback V. I do have a fair bit of info on the XTC and some of the other projects that are coming but I am not at liberty to tell you too much or else my secret clearance at the vintage skunkworks will get pulled. I can tell you the XTC or whatever it ends up being called is not a new reg but are modifications to existing regs that will be another leap forward, you think your Phoenix is good now, just wait.

There are a lot of good ideas floating around and hopefully more to come that make it to production. If you or anyone else has an idea, contact some of the folks who are doing the design and production work, you never know, you might have hit on something really cool.

While I am at it, if any of you run across an idea for a vintage...or modern for that matter...tool you would like to see produced, shoot me an email. If I make it for production, yours is free.

 

[spectrum]

Pete, I am not familure with the Greenfield dh. A google search did not turn up anything. Do you have any more info or a link?

"Green field" being a generic term to the effect of new from scratch as opposed to needing a vintage donor unit as a basis.

As things stand the entire hose assembly (hoses, mouthpieces, valves) are all available as fresh parts. Cans are out there in plastic as are several diagrams and numerous other bits and pieces. This combined with commercial parts from current mainstream single hose models leaves one small leap to being able to produce a complete new unit with no salvage/rehab involved. Once this bridge is crossed the rare/limited part of the cost models vaporizes along with the cost of the reclaim effort The more you build the more the economies of scale kick in. What a small time operator may lack in volume buying/production power they can make up for in low overhead. Even today a refurbished vintage unit is not outrageous in price but the lower the price of admission becomes the more will be attracted. Also, if they are available in quantity they can be out there for sale at the shop, level.

There will always be those that appreciate owning a vintage unit so there will be room for both flavors.

How this all comes together I do not know but based on what I have seen since getting involved with diving in 2005 it seems inevitable.

Pete

 

[herman]

"Green field" being a generic term to the effect of new from scratch as opposed to needing a vintage donor unit as a basis.

As things stand the entire hose assembly (hoses, mouthpieces, valves) are all available as fresh parts. Cans are out there in plastic as are several diagrams and numerous other bits and pieces. This combined with commercial parts from current mainstream single hose models leaves one small leap to being able to produce a complete new unit with no salvage/rehab involved. Once this bridge is crossed the rare/limited part of the cost models vaporizes along with the cost of the reclaim effort The more you build the more the economies of scale kick in. What a small time operator may lack in volume buying/production power they can make up for in low overhead. Even today a refurbished vintage unit is not outrageous in price but the lower the price of admission becomes the more will be attracted. Also, if they are available in quantity they can be out there for sale at the shop, level.

There will always be those that appreciate owning a vintage unit so there will be room for both flavors.

How this all comes together I do not know but based on what I have seen since getting involved with diving in 2005 it seems inevitable.

Pete

Now I understand, never heard that term before, thanks. I completely agree and I think the odds of a totally new reg being produced is pretty good. The hard part would be convincing dive shops the regs really are fun to dive and getting them to train divers in their use.

 

[Ed Palma]

I'll admit to googling "greenfield" as well

Herman, at the risk of your clearance getting pulled, just the whet my appetite even further for the XTC in April, how big an improvement will it be?