Hi, Herb, My info was slightly inaccurate, as it appears that about 65,000 Leica badged CL's were produced, with a few more Minolta or Leica/Minolta badged CL's produced for the Japanese market. That figure (65,000) is about twice as many as the M series produced during the time the CL was sold (turns out it was M5's, not M4's).
I'm getting this at Steve Gandy's page, down near the bottom: http://www.cameraquest.com/leicacl.htm I don't disagree with your statement that sometimes raising the price of something will actually increase sales, as a lower price is seen by some as an indicator of "cheapness", rather than a "good buy". That actually happened to a house that I used to own: we tried without success to sell privately. When we got a real estate agent, she said, "put the price up by $20,000, and it will sell". It did, within a week! But, I guess my point in my earlier post was two-fold. Firstly, the CL "experience" shows that some want a "bargain" Leica (as I'm sure the current C1 would prove). Secondly, please don't lump all Leica owners (or any other brand owners) together. There may be as many reasons for ownership as there are owners. I was planning on selling my CL, which had been in the shop for almost 6 months. I got it back (finally had the $$ for the bill) almost two weeks ago. I got back my first roll last week. The sharpness and beautiful contrast of that little lens is palpable. That combined with the beautiful feel of the camera in my hands, made me decide that I can't part with it. That has nothing to do with cachet, or high price, or anything other than quality, imho. Not that I mind owning a "Leica" <vbg> cheers, frank regards, frank Herb Chong wrote: > finally, someone who wants to talk about this instead of jumping up and down and > screaming Leica's rule. > > what were the total unit sales of the M bodies at the time? there are several > instances of retailing products where raising the price increased sales. to charge > this much, they must have something. that's cachet, invented or real. Honda > discovered this when selling the NSX. they had to raise their prices to something > closer to Ferraris to keep their sales up. buying up Leicas at bargain prices means > subjective bargains. they are priced considerably less than what other Leicas are > going for, not the total universe of used rangefinder cameras, some of which are > close in quality for substantially less. how many people take Seagull TLR cameras > seriously? probably many fewer than ought to. at least Leica makes premium cameras > for a premium price. there are some famous marques that do average build for a > premium price. the Sears Diehard battery is an example of such a marketing campaign > that was well known in the 60's and 70's. their batteries were the same as everyone > else's. t! he! > re are a few others well known that would only cause more hot air here than there > already is. > -- "What a senseless waste of human life" -The Customer in Monty Python's Cheese Shop sketch
