Buying a dvx on ebay

[JSF]

Ok, here's the deal. You can get a "new" grey market 100b on ebay with tele and wide lenses, tapes, cases, and a tripod for $2500.

Or, you can get from an authorized dealer with no accessories except bootcamp and bullet for $500 more.

If the only thing you loose buying grey camera from a NYC depot shop is a 1 year defect warranty (and I would love to hear from people that had a defect warranty show up in the first year), is it really worth spending $500 more and not getting the lenses, tapes, cases and tripod??? How much more would you end up spending to get those things? $300? $400?

I have read almost every post on why you want to avoid the "fake" $1000 100b's but not much on buying a new grey camera with all the goodies from ebay stores.

JF

[Roadkill475]

Personally, I would never go with ebay...There are a bunch of sites that are legit that have deals of about that price....I would check out Cnet for the most trusted stores....Good deals....Never trust those deals, I'm sure you already know that.....I was a victim of one of those NYC deals....BaaaAd news...

My camera hasn't had any defects up to this point and I've had mine for just over a year..."Jinx knock on wood".....Still wouldn't go with the deluxe package with all the extra bells and whistles....Get the camera first for a decent price...Then choose later to get the other accessories....That's just me though...Good luck!

[Nathan.Buxton]

those "bells and whistles" are all junk. Or at least that's what i would assume.

[Whzkid]

Well JSE that is not the only thing you lose. You will not have a USA warranty.

Best,


Rob

[vortex677]

I bought mine of ebay. No problems so far. It came with a usa warranty. The people were nice and everything went well. I saved way to much money over 800 bux to be exact from the store i wanted to get it originaly from B and H. Just remebr check feedback on ebay. Make sure they are an ebay legit store. Make sure you call and ask them every question you can think of, and make sure it is not an import. As for the items they give u. Most of them are truly crap. I got a tripod which is nice for photoshooting but no where near the quality of the one i got for 600 or so. The cases are usualy cool and keep it protected. The lenses.....well there okay. The tapes well u know where im getting at. Just ask them how much would they sell you the camera without the goodies.

[duranracing23]

You should try sunshine electronics i got mine from them for 2500 everything went well.

[nocoast]

yeah, dvx's dont cost 3 g's?

[JSF]

Yeah, I think if I bought one, I would buy from Sunshine because they seemed to have the best package...If the lenses were worth anything. Has anyone used their "titanium professional" wide and tele lenses? I'm guessing the're no century optics, but will they do a good job?

[nocoast]

my guess is that the lenses wont even be worth bothering with...save up the dinero for a century...

[Nathan.Buxton]

bad lenses are very noticeable.... the quality of glass affects a lot more than you might assume.

[Huy Vu]

Yeah, I think if I bought one, I would buy from Sunshine because they seemed to have the best package...If the lenses were worth anything. Has anyone used their "titanium professional" wide and tele lenses? I'm guessing the're no century optics, but will they do a good job?

Useless craps. I have both the wide and the telephoto and there's so much edge distortion that it's unusable.

[tbuelna]

Bought mine from a legit ebay member (power seller with 99+ feedback) about a year ago and she runs like a top. Do a little research and you will be fine. When I upgrade to the HVX, ebay is where I will be going.

[Spec-Comm]

I agree with Nathan and the others that say you're getting lesser quality hardware. Our price is $2645. Then order yourself a nice tripod like a Manfrotto 501HDV or a 503 or even the Vinten that Panasonic sells AG-YUTDV and you will be way happier than if you bought that other stuff. You would at least be able to go out on a shoot. Here is a link to our deal. (http://www.spec-comm.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=92) We have the DVX100BP in stock and the AG-YUTDV is in stock too. I would have to get pricing on the AG-YUTDV for you. We will have to order the Manfrotto tripods in but they are only a few days out.

Best regards,

Andrew Hoffman
Senior Operations Manager
Specialized Communications Corp.
20940 Twin Springs Dr.
Smithsburg, MD 21783-1510 USA
800-359-1858
301-790-0103
Fax: 301-790-0173
andrewh@spec-comm.com
www.spec-comm.com

Please visit our new online store at ( http://www.spec-comm.com/store ). New products being added daily!

[Saiaf]

I bought my dvx100b from ebay. Saved so much money, great customer service. EMPIREDIGITAL, best deals. Next day shipping FOR FREE!!! 4 year warranty, got a hundred dollars off that. I buy all my electronics from EMPIREDIGITAL. They are selling the dvx100b for 2,199 right now. go get it man. if you have any problems I will personally send you money through paypal, thats how confident i am.

[tcgliderguy]

Based on Andrew Hoffman's post above... and what I found on their website, I'm placing an order today for a DVX-100B. The only glitch is that they don't have anything in their shopping cart interface to accomdate a PayPal payment, but they returned my phone call, and gave me the PayPal information.

I'll be posting my results here.... Hopefully, it will be a positive experience....

-Taylor

[fevercity]

There's always resellerratings.com to double-check the 'iffy' guys.

Some people have had some luck - some not so much. I bought mine slightly-used from a camera op on eBay. He'd taken great care of it too.

[kledster]

I bought my dvx100b from ebay. Saved so much money, great customer service. EMPIREDIGITAL, best deals. Next day shipping FOR FREE!!! 4 year warranty, got a hundred dollars off that. I buy all my electronics from EMPIREDIGITAL. They are selling the dvx100b for 2,199 right now. go get it man. if you have any problems I will personally send you money through paypal, thats how confident i am.

wow, you even capitalize the company name and the word 'free'. if i'm not mistaken i'd say you work for them. :)

[tcgliderguy]

wow, you even capitalize the company name and the word 'free'. if i'm not mistaken i'd say you work for them. :)

That's a pretty amazing culture in Brooklyn...... I started checking out some of the Brooklyn grey market dealers on Resellerratings.com .... and found that a few of the "ratings" pages had been shut down, because they caught the dealers planting phony reviews about themselves on the site.....

I'm telling you, Tarzan, it's a jungle out there!

-Taylor

[GGF NYC]

I'm from Brooklyn, I wouldn't trust any stores over here...If you find any dealers In the Bay Ridge, Bensonhurst area in Brooklyn, I'd be willing to help u out and go check them out myself to see if they're legit so you don;t get screwed, just let me know.

[fevercity]

Even better than resellerratings.com is this collection from Don Wiss.......

http://donwiss.com/pictures/brooklynstores/


He started collecting pictures of the actual storefronts of some pretty sketchy Brooklyn operations. Check it out. Pretty wild.

[steveandbelinda]

Have you ever heard of Mercury Optics. Any good?

[tcgliderguy]

Well..... at 3:20 PM (Mountain Time), the dogs next door starting pitching a fit.... announcing the arrival of the big brown UPS truck.

As expected, my shiny new DVX-100B was being delivered......

Thanks to Andrew Hoffman and Spec-comm.com......... I got what I paid for last Thursday. (See the message above in this same thread for details...)

Good communication... no nonsense.....2nd Day Air shipping for something like $13.... Spec-Comm gets a positive feedback. Oh, wait a minute, this isn't e-Bay!

Thanks Andrew!

-Taylor Collins

[JSF]

So what i'm hearing is that you can save $600 by buying a dvx on ebay if you don't mind not having a year warranty. But you should use the extra cash to invest in some good lenses and a tripod, because the accessories you can get from sunshineelectric and jandkcameras aren't worth it.

As far as the manfrotto tripod idea, I guess they're a good tripod (i've never used one), but if I'm having a problem coming up with $2500 for a dvx, and i'm buying grey so i can afford a century optics lens, i'm probably not going to spend $600 on a tripod.

[Susan Ee]

I bought a barely used camera from a guy who originally bought his on EBay from Empire Digital (E&R Electronics). I have his receipt. He bought it in January. I was scoping out the cameras on EBay at that time and know that Empire Digital was selling them for a really cheap price. But he got pressured into buying a high capacity battery for $150 and a 3 year ext warranty for $335. So the total came out to almost $500 more than advertised. I've read that that's normal. I've even called a few places off EBay before I found this camera -- if you don't want to buy the packaged deals, they'll tell you they don't have the camera in stock (even though it says it is on line).

The camera itself is great. The tripod, etc aren't things you'd spend money on really, although the tripod is cool for setting up lights and things but not for your camera. The case is nice. The lens -- haven't tried it, don't expect to. Cheap lenses usually aren't worth the weight. The extra battery works but I don't plan on using the 3 year warranty because there is no way I'm sending my camera to Empire Digital with the hope that it'll come back fixed if something ever happened to it.

[Huy Vu]

Yup, something pretty similar happened when I bought my FX1 off ebay from Digital Corp. Ended up paying $200 more than expected for the "made in Japan" version and a high capacity battery. Not too bad but the battery casing cracked after six months of use.