^ I'm not sure, philly. I don't know about guitars, but for amps, there definitely are some differences between the brands. A mesa recto goes for around $1500 in the US (last time I checked, anyway- it's probably gone up a bit now but i doubt it's any more than $2k, it's very hard to find mesa prices online in the US). The price in the UK is more like £2k. If you then look at, say, a Fryette, a sig x in the UK is ~£1650, while in the USA it's $2249 (~£1350). I would also point out (I could be wrong) that I would have strong suspicions that Mesa sells a lot more amps in the UK than Fryette does, so the whole "smaller market" thing arguably doesn't apply either. Unless, I guess, Fryette expects to sell so few amps in the UK that it doesn't even really have a distribution thing set up and if something does go wrong it has to be sent back to the US....
I still don't think you're seeing the point Dave. They can't actually sell them huge amounts cheaper as prices here in the UK at dealers include our 20% VAT and 3.7% import duty, plus the transport costs and administration fees. You can't compare that to a price in the US that only includes an 8% or less sales tax.
If you want to buy in the US and bring it into the country illegally (avoiding taxes) to save money then that's your choice, but you can't use that as an argument to say that PRS or Gibson guitars here in the UK are seriously overpriced.
I never said I wanted to bring them in illegally. I said after taking VAT and postage (here) etc. into account they were about £500 cheaper in the US. That's still a fair whack, though admittedly not the ~£1k that my original posts may have implied. I only made mention of the US price, without VAT/customs/postage charges, as an interesting aside.
After that, I very much believe that a thing is only actually worth what someone will pay for it.
For example, there was talk a while back of second-hand PRSs (coincidentally) taking a nose-dive. A seller can sit on his concept of a book-price, what they were going for last week, as much as he likes, but if he can't shift it for that, the thing just ain't worth that much at the moment - you cannot convert it to that much cash. It's only worth what you can get for it.
By the same argument, the house prices were correct until all the prospective buyers went sod-off it's too much, I'm waiting until you drop your prices and I can afford them. House prices have to come down when that happens.
Now, if Mr Smith can't sell the guitars he needs to at the price he's going for now - he will need to drop his prices as well (simplified I know - another option is put them up). The price before the change is correct, and so is the price after.
And this thread has done one thing for me - I'm now convinced that we're being slightly premature in expecting the price in one marketplace to be comparable to that in another marketplace. Just because we can see the prices that Mr US is charged on the internet doesn't mean we can expect the same prices for Mr UK. They are completely different markets that do not operate together at the moment. There are too many factors involved including average disposable income, taxes and duties, demand and fashionability of the item in the territory, etc, etc...
When it comes down to it though, it's still the supplier's perogative (in my mind anyway) to run his business as he sees fit. He's probably watching stuff like this going "Jeez guys, I'm doing my best to get the thing to you at what I believe to be a fair price, if you want it, buy it, if not, don't..."
Oh, I agree that something's only worth what someone will pay for it- if you're talking about something having value on paper. If I have a guitar and claim it's worth £2k but no-one will actually give me £2k, then I agree that it's not worth £2k :lol: By that I mean that the minimum value of something is set by what someone will pay- if I claim something is worth a certain price yet can't find a buyer willing to pay that price then it probably isn't worth that.
But that's a bit different from what we're talking about in this thread- where you *can* find a buyer willing to pay it (for whatever reason), but where you (personally) are not convinced it's worth the price (again, for whatever reason).
Now, granted, we could all just say, "If you think it's worth it, pay it, and if you don't, don't." (I actually don't have a gigantic problem with that statement, FWIW) But that's no fun :lol:
[FWIW I don't think the housing market collapsed because the consumers suddenly became rational and sensible- credit dried up overnight. :lol: If there were easy credit and 125% mortgages like there were in 2007 I could easily see the housing market going back to the bubble it was. :lol: Again, if anything, that backs up my point where I said that higher prices would lead to decreased demand if that increased price led to lots of people simply being unable to afford the product, regardless of how much they actually wanted to buy it.]
My point is when something is going for a different price in a different territory, and where, legally, if the manufacturer would allow it, I could import it paying all applicable taxes and retail shipping rates for much less than I can buy it in my own country, that, to me, means that that product is very expensive in my own country.
You mentioned different supply and demand and fashionability in different territories- that's a good point. As jpf touched on much earlier in this thread, to me the fashionability/demand is too much tied up in the retail price to be really considered as a separate item... as I mentioned earlier in this thread, on the more UK-centric forums I post on, mesas are considered boutique, whereas on the US-centred forums I post on, they're not. Pretty much only due to the price and (imagined?) value or (imagined?) lack of value inferred by the customer in that territory because of the price.
My big problem about saying "Prices are right because the market price can't be wrong" is that it doesn't really tell you anything useful. To me a scientific theory doesn't really mean much unless it's fasifiable.
