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September 1999
(as originally sent via email, by now some links may have expired)
Number One
Greetings!
I have been meaning to write a small news letter for www.camprice.com subscribers for the past few weeks. Now, with holidays over, and the family installed in school after two months in France, I find the time to set down my thoughts.
Since the May 19th opening of camprice.com, things have been moving fast. The initial bugs in the system were few and not particularly nasty, thank goodness. I feel this is mainly because of the effort made by the WebTeam (support@camprice.com) in putting the whole computer database and search engine configuration together.
Word of mouth is just about the only "advertising" we have done so far. This will change this Fall. A campaign in CameraShopper in the USA and several specialist magazines overseas should start in about Novemeber. I predict that this will bring a host of new subscribers. These ads will not be fancy and overblown, but rather straight forward, informative, down to earth pieces. (note:Retailers, please send me your contact details for publication, including fairs you will be attending. I will try to include you in appropriate ads, as space permits.)
The latest changes to the database might not be apparent to many of you, but they deserve to be explained.
The currency exchange rates are now adjusted every 30 minutes. 48 times a day the system is corrected, and the very latest exchange rates installed. This is all done automatically.
Try doing that with a "book" type guide.
Another innovation has been the rounding of foreign currencies. Rather that have a US$60 price become Ffr 348 for example, results are rounded to Ffr350 automatically. (There was a recent bug which effected the French search results in currencies other than US$, but that has been brought under control)
Try doing that with a "book" type guide.
Euros have been added to the currencies available, with an eye to the disappearance of many European Community currencies in 2001. Dutch Guilders and Italian Lire have also been added, because we now have Dutch and Italian subscribers! Can you think of other currencies we should be listing?
Try doing that with a "book" type guide.
There are camprice.com subscribers in: USA, Brazil, Argentina, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Holland, UK, Russia, Australia, New Zealand, Finland South Africa and Japan.
I was playing with the search engine and came up with some interesting www.camprice.com statistics:
177 camera listings for "Ihagee"
1961 cameras listed with "Tessar" lenses
3440 listings with "Compur" shutters
578 with "Compound" shutters
12929 cameras "made in Germany" (over half the contents of the database!)
3417 cameras "made in Japan" (hmmmm food for thought there......)
3367 different cameras made from 1930-39
8016 "roll film" cameras listed
Try to do this with a "book" type guide!
One big disappointment for me this Summer was the lack of pictures on www.camprice.com. I had several hundred ready to scan and load, but I have not received authorization from the copyright owners yet. On the other hand, recently I received permission to use ALL of Jean-Loup Princelle's pictures, including unpublished ones! This makes me very very happy. For those of you who might not know, JL Princelle is the author of books concerning Foca, Russian Cameras, and Leica copies. He is also an outstanding professional photographer, and his reserve of great camera pictures is phenomenal. Thanks JL!
In addition, I took over 250 digital pictures at a private collection in France. Look for more pictures on www.camprice.com soon. Add those to the pictures I already have and we're getting close to 1000. My goal has always been to have about 10-15% pictures. That is equal to ~2000-3000 pictures. A lot depends on storage available on the server used by camprice.com. For the moment we have lots of room. There will come a time, however when a decision will have to be made to "rent" more space or limit the number of pictures available. Fortunately we have a ways to go before that's the case.
The home pages of www.camprice.com will soon have a new look. Maybe even before this news letter makes it out. In order to make the pages as fast loading as possible, new templates are being used, based on suggestions made by yahoo.com. We will be going from fast to faster. Our policy has not changed. There will still be no spinning globes, singing elephants or jumping monkeys on www.camprice.com. (Personally, I still resist loading pages of sites with movies or music coming through. I just stop loading, and move on.)
Sneak preview at: http://www.camprice.com/try.html
The description fields of many cameras have been updated to include relevant hyper links, and click to send email addresses. Now when you have a question about "Zeiss" cameras, you're only one mouse click away from the answer. In addition, you can add your Zeiss lens serial number and Compur shutter serial number information to the database established by Marc James Small and Charles Barringer, simply by clicking a mouse!
Try doing that with a "book" type guide.
A form is in the works for subscribers to submit cameras to the database. This will make it possible for anyone at camprice.com to add cameras not already in the database. The form will present the information in such a manner that I can vet it and put it right into the listing almost immediately.
Try doing that with a "book" type guide.
The longer I work on the database and see the response to www.camprice.com, the more I feel we're moving in the right direction.
Thanks to all of you have paid your hard earned money to use something new and untested. Together we are breaking ground every day in an effort that just a few years ago was unthinkable.
In Market news, the major story of the moment is "Will the Japanese Yen continue its climb?" Dealers, particularily in the Asian marketplace have seen a recent increase in the return of Japanese buyers. This has been a blessing for these dealers, since this segment of the world market has been (and continues to be) very quiet.
Australia collectors and dealers continue to expand their internet presence. I'm seeing more "Down Under" action on eBay than ever before. The long distance shipping hurdle seems to be diminishing, with more and more sales being made inter country. (Anerican buyers take note: The US postal service looks closely at less than 5% of the small packages arriving from overseas. Insured postal delivery might be the way to go if you're looking to escape paying duty on a foreign camera purchase. Remember, if they don't ask, you don't pay!) Overseas payment for purchases is still somewhat of a stumbling block for many would be buyers. Secure credit card transactions are becoming commonplace, and this seems to be the path of the future. In addition, credit card purchases come with a certain amount of built-in customer protection when it comes to a deal gone bad.
Camera prices, in general, are rising slowly for the middle of the road collectibles. I see this phenomenon as the "eBay Effect."
While on the subject of auctions, there are a bunch of them now available on-line. Some more interesting than others.
Here's the Schuitima & van Well auction that started in August in Holland:
They have some interesting items, such as an original (replica) Kodak:
The auction is mostly in English, but amounts are in Guilders!
Amazon.com Vintage and collectible auction had 45 items on it when I checked today:
Not a threat for eBay, not by a long shot.
Yahoo.com auctions does a little better with 310 items in its vintage section.
An Ikonta B was going for US$50 with 30 minutes left, from the picture I wonder about the condition...
A 2A Autographic was going for US$50 too, with an hour left.
But no one has as many cameras for sale as that auction we love to hate....
(eBay at the same time has 4429 in its Vintage and collectible section)
The future is nothing but bright on the Internet and at www.camprice.com!
sincerely,
Douglas St.Denny
Discovery Bay, Lantau Island
Hong Kong
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