New 85mm Ultrasonic Prime - Under $100

[rwebbart]

New 85mm Ultrasonic Prime - Under $100

Yep, you read it right. I stopped at a local pawn shop that was next to a location I was shooting yesterday. In the camera equipment, they had an 85mm Ultrasonic marked at $139. I asked to see it and it looked in great condition.

I came home and looked it up, to see the value and the List Price was $569 on Amazon, but on sale for $320. I looked on the auction sites and it was going for $250-$320 used....

All the reviews gave it 5 out of 5 or 10 out of 10 and the pro's were all comparing it to thier L series glass. So I took a camera and a laptop and went back.

I tested it in store, downloading and zooming in on my laptop to see if I could find something wrong with it. All thier other gear seemed overpriced, so I wondered why it was so cheap. I quickly got over it after testing it thoroughly. I talked them down to $90 and skipped out of the store like a schoolgirl!

After a day of relentless testing, I am very happy with my find. It makes me want to check pawn shops all the time. Anyone ever have similar experiences?

 

[Big Mike]

Nice find, that lens is on my short list.

A few months ago, I bought a flash meter on E-bay, from a local seller. I arranged to pick it up rather than pay for shipping. When I got there, I found out that she was one of the original power sellers, and had been doing this for nearly 10 years...and now she was finally tired of it. She was having a garage sale to liquidate all of her stock. It was mostly collectible toys and stuff like that...but she had a whole table of old camera gear. I almost bought an old 35mm Pentax for $35...it came with 4 lenses, TC, extension tubes, flash & bag.

I did buy a Vivitar 283 for $5 and another cheap flash for $2. The real find was a bag of 'miscellaneous' that I got for $1. It had a rubber lens hood, a couple 46mm color filters, a 67mm star filter and a 67mm circular polarizer!

 

[skoundrel]

hahaha i always drempt of something like that happenin! My guess is a lot of people will be throwing out nice 35 and mf cameras/lenses in the digital future.