The demise of the 'asset'

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Nod said:
FP4 is currently on special offer at Analogue Wonderland for £7.50 (reduced from £8) so the bank's calculator is a bit off (50%) on film costs.
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The bank's calculator is, I imagine, spot on - the £5.00 I quoted is the 1967 price upvalued to now.

In other words, the price in real terms has increased by 50%.
 
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Phil V said:
Electronic goods btw (which would include cameras) have reduced in price massively compared to cpi. A colour tv at 1973 prices would be a couple of grand today, whereas in reality it’s a quarter of that*
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3 years ago I came back to amateur radio after a 20 year hiatus. Before I left the hobby, a typical VHF/UHF handheld (walkie talkie) was about £250-300. The first radio I purchased when I got my licence back was smaller, lighter & more powerful than those of 20 years ago, and it was under £30. My HF (short wave) radio was £550 new, that's half the price of anything 20 years earlier.

The difference here is the fact that Korea & China are now making the gear, and the manufacturing costs have obviously plummeted.
 
Jelster said:
3 years ago I came back to amateur radio after a 20 year hiatus. Before I left the hobby, a typical VHF/UHF handheld (walkie talkie) was about £250-300. The first radio I purchased when I got my licence back was smaller, lighter & more powerful than those of 20 years ago, and it was under £30. My HF (short wave) radio was £550 new, that's half the price of anything 20 years earlier.

The difference here is the fact that Korea & China are now making the gear, and the manufacturing costs have obviously plummeted.
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But you should compare the price of a Yaesu/Kenwood/Icom handheld, not with a Baofeng that doesn't even meet emission requirements :)

wsj I guess?
 
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Sangoma said:
But you should compare the price of a Yaesu/Kenwood/Icom handheld, not with a Baofeng that doesn't even meet emission requirements :)
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Quite right.

Using an inflation calculator is just a starting point for comparison. You then have to consider all the changes (usually but not always, improvements) that a later item has over the earlier item.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
Quite right.

Using an inflation calculator is just a starting point for comparison. You then have to consider all the changes (usually but not always, improvements) that a later item has over the earlier item.
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My point is that stuff like this wasn't available 20 years ago. Technology and production methods have leapt forwards in leaps and bounds over the last 20 years.

Sangoma said:
But you should compare the price of a Yaesu/Kenwood/Icom handheld, not with a Baofeng that doesn't even meet emission requirements :)

wsj I guess?
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Who says it doesn't? Looks fine on my scope, image rejection is not much better than an old CB though, I'll give you that. And even the "better" TYT handies are half the price of those from the big 3. I had to pay a lot more for my Anytone 858, but then that's DMR, a technology that was only just in it's infancy 20 years ago.

Also, compare the FT891 to the old FT757. The later radio is a much better radio all round, and having worked for SMC, Lowe & MLS, I could never dream of HF radios for £500 25 years ago.....
 
Jelster said:
My point is that stuff like this wasn't available 20 years ago. Technology and production methods have leapt forwards in leaps and bounds over the last 20 years.



Who says it doesn't? Looks fine on my scope, image rejection is not much better than an old CB though, I'll give you that. And even the "better" TYT handies are half the price of those from the big 3. I had to pay a lot more for my Anytone 858, but then that's DMR, a technology that was only just in it's infancy 20 years ago.

Also, compare the FT891 to the old FT757. The later radio is a much better radio all round, and having worked for SMC, Lowe & MLS, I could never dream of HF radios for £500 25 years ago.....
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When I have checked them on my SA they are not a clean as they should be, and others have found the same, don't know that a scope would show that :)

Nobody will dispute the advances in technology, my comment was about the comparing mainstream fully compliant radios with cheap Chinese radios that carry the Chine Export CE mark.
The receivers on most of the Chinese radios are as wide as a barn door too.

They work, and under most conditions adequately, but they certainly don't compare in quality. (I have three Chinese hadnhelds, a 4m mobile, a 10m,6m,2m and 70cm mobile and a 70cm/2m mobile, and have had several of the Chinese QRP HF sets, so first hand experience)

I thought the 891 was about 675 new, I have no idea how much a new 757 was in say 1988, but would agree in terms of salaries, radios have come down
 
Sangoma said:
I thought the 891 was about 675 new, I have no idea how much a new 757 was in say 1988, but would agree in terms of salaries, radios have come down
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3 years ago I bought a brand new 891 from Moonraker for £550, but that was when Chris was still there, and we worked am MLS together, so I think I got a "special". I've got an old (very old) Network Analyser and whilst the UV5R is a little on the wide side, it's not that bad, but like I said, the Rx is poor on anything but the rubber duck.
 
Nod said:
FP4 is currently on special offer at Analogue Wonderland for £7.50 (reduced from £8) so the bank's calculator is a bit off (50%) on film costs.
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AW are not the cheapest for FP4+ but even they will do you a roll of Kentmere for under a fiver, so given the much reduced demand I think the price compares well with that of the FP3.
 
Jelster said:
3 years ago I came back to amateur radio after a 20 year hiatus. Before I left the hobby, a typical VHF/UHF handheld (walkie talkie) was about £250-300. The first radio I purchased when I got my licence back was smaller, lighter & more powerful than those of 20 years ago, and it was under £30. My HF (short wave) radio was £550 new, that's half the price of anything 20 years earlier.

The difference here is the fact that Korea & China are now making the gear, and the manufacturing costs have obviously plummeted.
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I'm not subjectively interested in amateur radio, but a few years ago bought 6 of the cheap Baofeng radios, on a licenced system, for use on our farm. We bought them following an accident when things could have gone very wrong. We bought them primarily for emergency use, although they do have routine uses too, and they're fine. We simply don't care whether or not they fully comply with all of the various standards, what we care about is reliability, range and battery life. Most other farmers bought theirs for the same reason and I happen to know that they have saved lives.

That applies to most functional items, including cameras.
 
I would have thought that a lot of farmers would do this, you hear of a lot of serious accidents in agriculture, presumably because workers are out there on their own with highly dangerous machinery.
 
ShinySideUp said:
I would have thought that a lot of farmers would do this, you hear of a lot of serious accidents in agriculture, presumably because workers are out there on their own with highly dangerous machinery.
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Yes. Farmworkers often work alone, and nobody even knows if they run into a problem until it's far too late. And in rural areas mobile phones often don't work, even when calling 999. I know of a life saved when a stockman was gored by a bull and other workers came running, and in another case there was a serious fire in a hayfield, with 3 workers trapped. On our own farm, a forklift caught fire, no real danger to life but the radio call "Fire fire fire main gate top field" saved the machine.

All of the local farmers use the same system and, if push comes to shove, we all know which channels the other farms use.
 
Garry Edwards said:
Yes. Farmworkers often work alone, and nobody even knows if they run into a problem until it's far too late. And in rural areas mobile phones often don't work, even when calling 999. I know of a life saved when a stockman was gored by a bull and other workers came running, and in another case there was a serious fire in a hayfield, with 3 workers trapped. On our own farm, a forklift caught fire, no real danger to life but the radio call "Fire fire fire main gate top field" saved the machine.

All of the local farmers use the same system and, if push comes to shove, we all know which channels the other farms use.
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My latest radio has a "man down" feature. If it goes horizontal for more than a few seconds it puts out an alarm call. I don't bother to switch it on, but for industrial use, it makes a lot of sense.
 
ShinySideUp said:
Out of curiosity, I watched an auction of a Nikon D810 (because I own one), it sold for £549, that's a camera that six years ago sold for over £2000. In the very early 80's I owned a Nikon FM2n film camera, I think I paid about £110 for it (although I'm not entirely sure and some 23 years later I sold that camera on eBay for, yes, £110. Ok there is inflation to be taken into account but nevertheless, that was good value. When I see things like the D810, it makes me wary about spending on new camera equipment, especially the actual camera. Even lenses don't really hold the value that one might expect although I'm not sure why. Manufacturers come out with new models all the time and second hand value of the previous one plummets -- yes that is the way of the world I know.

Take the Nikon Z7, when released it cost not far off three grand but was superseded by the Z7ii a tiny bit over two years later so second hand ones now go for a little over a thousand; that's a big drop.

Fifteen years ago, I bought a Yanagisawa saxophone for two thousand pounds, with the right climate for its sale now? about £2000, despite one new model being introduced in the meantime -- that is my only asset. Oh, apart from my tiny house which I bought 20 years ago for £60K and is now valued at £235K - should have bought two!

It all makes me wonder if there is any photographic equipment that holds its value for years or should even the highest quality gear be, in the end, considered disposable.
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This is funny! Around 2000 I was strictly a film guy and had used mostly a Nikon FG for everything. Got full of myself and decided I needed a better camera and bought a Nikon F5. Never did figure out how to get better photo's but I had an expensive camera to fail with! Still have that F5 and take it out and pet it now and then but haven't used it in years! Think I paid $1600 for it and soon after the digital scene really took off, the value of that F5 went right in the toilet. And the best photo I ever took I got with a Yashica 635 twinlens camera I got used for about $125! A camera you can work has more value than one you can't. Found out the hard way! :)
 
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