Retail?

I really don't care whether the seller lists an MSRP that was the actual cost of the actual item being sold, or the highest MSRP that an IDENTICAL item being sold ever had, even if that item was regularly discounted. On some level using the MSRP rather than the actual costs can avoid confusion for a purchaser when choosing the same item between different sellers. The practice of listing an MSRP that might have only been asked for one day of a given year, as a comparison to the discounted price being currently offered, is a standard retail practice. Are we asking Audiogoners to have a (much?) higher standard? Often times the seller wasn't the original buyer, and there's a good chance the current seller doesn't really know what the actual original cost was to the original buyer. Putting a some what accurate reference point is better than putting nothing. Let the buyer beware.
I do get peeved when a seller lists an untrue MSRP. I suspect that often times a seller uses the MSRP of a latter model for a previous one, e.g. listing the Mark IV price when selling the Mark III item. That's lazy and dishonest.

As I said earlier, often times the seller is not the original purchaser. The second hand price will vary over time or circumstances. The newest reseller might only be left with limited resources regarding discovery of the original MSRP of that particular unit. Due to the way things are marketed, most items only have a few years in which they are marketed new, and the MSRP usually doesn't vary all that much during that run. Expecting the newest reseller to list the price he paid for a used item as the "Original Purchase Price is not what is intended by "Original Price" (as I understand it), means little, and one might argue; really isn't really anyone one else's business. The condition of such a used item would be amongst those things that would mean more to me than whether the listed MSRP was off by a year or two. I wouldn't let an honest mistake, when making an honest effort to provide a potential buyer with as much information as possible, as grounds for labeling a seller dishonest. I'd suggest that those that would, not even walk on the same side of the street as a glass house. With that in mind, they might want to stay out of Manhattan.:-)