Paul Taylor
Well-Known Member
We have a couple large "antique malls" in Phoenix, called "Brass Armadillo." Despite them slowly becoming more of indoor yard sales from the amount of non-antique / old stuff permeating them I still stop in about once a month or so to see if anything is new. It is the type of place where they rent out small little "cubicles" of space to whoever wants so they can sell stuff.
I am always there on the hunt for two things - photography stuff and vintage computing things. Unfortunately if a seller has anything in those two categories it is usually priced absolutely horrendously. There are three display cases by different vendors that usually have camera gear in them. One is full of mostly useless Polaroids, another that has a ton of older digicams (seller noticed that trend on social media....) and one that has a small assortment of SLRs. The one with the SLRs is usually full of cheap late 80s/early 90s plastic SLRS but sometimes has interesting stuff. Unfortuantely they all share a completely unrealistic pricing strategy, and it really bothers me to see the usable cameras sitting there decomposing because the seller has priced them 50-100% higher than even warrantied / tested cameras from places like KEH and Robert's. When I was there yesterday there was a well worn Minolta Srt202 that needed some love - and I would have totally saved it if the price was far - but the seller was asking $249 (yes, two hundred and forty nine dollars...) for the untested and abused camera that had been sitting for decades with no body cap or lens on it. Probably a good thing they don't have comment boxes for the vendors........
However, yesterday - hiding amongst the ever-growing hordes of landfill-fodder "FunkoPop" figurines that will surely doom us all to a plastic embalmed death - was something much more usable made of plastic.
A mint condition super clean Canon AF7 "Owl" point and shoot. It was in a little case and looked unused. Didn't stink, battery compartment was clean (and still had the "this camera requires batteries" warning sticker.) So for the whopping prices of $9 I bought it. Got it home - loaded up some batteries and a roll of HP5 and it appears to work perfectly fine. Not the most exciting of cameras - but it's condition and low price was a welcome change and I was excited to buy it.
I am always there on the hunt for two things - photography stuff and vintage computing things. Unfortunately if a seller has anything in those two categories it is usually priced absolutely horrendously. There are three display cases by different vendors that usually have camera gear in them. One is full of mostly useless Polaroids, another that has a ton of older digicams (seller noticed that trend on social media....) and one that has a small assortment of SLRs. The one with the SLRs is usually full of cheap late 80s/early 90s plastic SLRS but sometimes has interesting stuff. Unfortuantely they all share a completely unrealistic pricing strategy, and it really bothers me to see the usable cameras sitting there decomposing because the seller has priced them 50-100% higher than even warrantied / tested cameras from places like KEH and Robert's. When I was there yesterday there was a well worn Minolta Srt202 that needed some love - and I would have totally saved it if the price was far - but the seller was asking $249 (yes, two hundred and forty nine dollars...) for the untested and abused camera that had been sitting for decades with no body cap or lens on it. Probably a good thing they don't have comment boxes for the vendors........
However, yesterday - hiding amongst the ever-growing hordes of landfill-fodder "FunkoPop" figurines that will surely doom us all to a plastic embalmed death - was something much more usable made of plastic.
A mint condition super clean Canon AF7 "Owl" point and shoot. It was in a little case and looked unused. Didn't stink, battery compartment was clean (and still had the "this camera requires batteries" warning sticker.) So for the whopping prices of $9 I bought it. Got it home - loaded up some batteries and a roll of HP5 and it appears to work perfectly fine. Not the most exciting of cameras - but it's condition and low price was a welcome change and I was excited to buy it.
