Is the main reason audio equipment depreciates so much is

Jafant,

I read recently where a guy took apart some 20k Transparent cables and try to duplicate them. I don't remember where I read it. So unfortunately I can't provide a link. He wind up buying all the parts and putting it together. He did say some of the parts were a bit different because he could not find all the original parts. Though he said he found many. He says his total parts cost was 800.00. Plus all the time he spent putting it all together. He said at a price saving of nearly 19k he was extactic and he was very pleased with the sound.

Resale is so low because the item wasn't worth near the retail markup it began with, and people on here always want something for nothing.  You don't find that with cars, where dealers are making slim margins. A used vehicle price is much closer to new--too close if there's any extra mileage.  

"You don't find that with cars, where dealers are making slim margins"

What you said is the perception many people have. I worked as a car broker for 3 years. The dealer actually makes what they call in the Industry trunk money. That is essentially a kick back the dealer gets from the manufacturer. We would broker cars all day long at dealers cost and still make a good profit. Every month the manufacturers put out different incentives for different cars. We would focus are advertising on what cars we could make the most on. I remember when Mercedes was giving us a 4000.00 rebate for every E-series car we would sell. We would offer the car at dealer cost and sell a ton of them. They were paying me 25 percent of gross so I was making 1000.00 a car. It was a very lucrative business till the owner of my company got greedy and started screwing people.

I think the reason is a lot of audio equipment sound practically the same at widely varying price points due to economies of scale (labor and buying power) and the fact that audiophiles are constantly selling to upgrade. So if you're in the market for CD player and have two grand to spend, you can either buy a new one or one a used four grand unit and get practically the same sonic performance -- plus the four grand unit may have a higher resale value when time to upgrade again. When you are talking about six figure equipment, then the difference in performance is smaller still, if any at all.

That's what the used equipment seller is competing against. If the prices accurately reflected performance, the depreciation would be a lot less (see the iPad auctions on eBay where they usually sell for 60 to 75% of retail).

My man Taters!...:-)

keen observer of the obvious, love ya man!