How much will you pay for an exotic cartridge....

@bukanova

Grey market dealer buys directly from manufacturer, this is part of game.

No, they don’t buy from the manufacturers as far as i know, do you know exactly what you mean, can you recall any brand?

I discussed it with the distributor of ZYX in USA for example, nobody know the source of carts grey market dealers offering, but serial numbers are fake on grey market items from juki and this is why it’s impossible to track down the source. Fake serial on the cartridge body and blank field in the manuals where must be a serial number. I know exactly what i’m talking about.

I’m pretty sure they can only buy privately from another dishonest distributors, not for the manufacturer, because the Japanese manufacturer never deal with grey market sellers in China.

A lot of fake coming from China, just because other things manufactured in China, but exotic high-end cartridges manufactured in Japan and it’s another culture, they can’t make 100 more cartridges illegally for grey market sales as Chinese can do with clothes and some cheap stuff.

@mmai

I know 2juki, but the OP never mentioned such seller in his posts.

So what? Someone asked and i mentioned the biggest grey market dealer who sell some cartridges with fake serial numbers, he replaced them on ZYX cartridges, these cartridges are very expensive and exotic. His price is cheaper, but a distributors will give the buyer much better service, great prices and will treat customers like best friends. SoraSound in USA, Chicago.

I can’t speak for all distributors, but with my personal experience with grey market dealers and official distributors i choose official distributors. As some of you guys here i was looking for a cartridges and noticed big price difference between official retail and ebay, it was long time ago and i did not understand why it was cheaper. Believe me, the official distributor can offer much more than a grey market dealer, i bought my next officially and i can tell you for sure that grey market seller does not have an access to the manufacturer (to the cartridge designer in Japan), but the distributor know him personally and can quickly solve any issues with the cartridge (this is a perfect service for the buyers).

However, when it comes to very expensive cartridges i'm fine to buy used cartridges from audiophiles who bought them from official distributors only (if it’s not a vintage cartridge), but definitely not from the grey market cheaters. 

Just a reminder if anyone is considering a trip to Japan, the “consumption” (sales) tax rose on 1 October 2019 to 10% nationwide.  That applies to damned near all domestic purchases.

A manufacturer that bypasses his distributors in a given country will not have any distributors in that country for long! So it is in their interest if they are in the game for the long run to make sure their product isn’t being gray marketed by one of their other dealers or distributors that has decided to not play by the rules.


So for that simple reason a distributor can often exert pressure on a manufacturer if that distributor does good numbers. Once a relationship like that is ruined, it can be very hard for the manufacturer to get re-established as that sort of thing has a way of spreading. As an example, there is a Canadian speaker manufacturer that started bypassing his dealers here in the US. Dealers here in the US don’t want to do business with him anymore, and other manufacturers like us tend to not recommend his product as its so much harder to deal with.


If you want domestic support for a foreign product, good luck trying to take that to the distributor, even if you bought it second-hand. You got it on the cheap- that is the flip side- you might have to pay more on the other end.

Ralph, I generally agree with your post. However, in this instance we are talking about a cartridge...and not any other type of gear. The rep for this particular cartridge adds $8k to the retail price in Japan to arrange for the shipping and future servicing (if any...and with cartridges how often does this occur...although I personally did have to have warranty work done on my Lyra.. but I still think that is pretty unusual).
The more interesting thing is that in this case, the rep came out with threats against all of his off-shore competitors...because he was sure that they were under selling him. ( which I am 100% sure is correct...and that’s because they don’t  have the same business plan as this guy...which IMO...is simply to fleece the consumer to the absolute max).

chakster,

So what? Someone asked and i mentioned the biggest grey market dealer who sell some cartridges with fake serial numbers, he replaced them on ZYX cartridges, these cartridges are very expensive and exotic.

So you automatically assume it is Chinese?

By the way, the OP never mentioned "biggest grey market dealer". These are your words.