Sailor pens secondhand value

[DesAstor]

On 7/25/2024 at 1:23 AM, jchch1950 said:

Before the exchange rate changes in direction, now is the opportunity to buy Sailor pens.

Aint that the truth. I just bought a Sailor Ebonite Sculpture for a measly $442 which is close to 50% off. Bc I now have the same types of nibs in F, MF I also want a medium nib so that I can swap them around if I wanted to. So I checked Amazon and Amazon.jp offers the same identical Sailor 112037420 for either $143.77 (which I found first and put in my basket) or $124.29 (guess what I did). While this looks like a race to the bottom but the yen can only drop that much, I suppose before someone steps in so I am getting while the getting is good. The unfortunate thing for me is that I thought I'd by maybe 1 or 2 Sailor pen. But I learned I like the darn pens quite a bit. To complicate things I just ran across a post and suddenly am in the market for I think it's called a President Platinum? This is worse than crack cocaine.

[DesAstor]

On 7/25/2024 at 1:23 AM, jchch1950 said:

Before the exchange rate changes in direction, now is the opportunity to buy Sailor pens.

Aint that the truth. I just bought a Sailor Ebonite Sculpture for a measly $442 which is close to 50% off. Bc I now have the same types of nibs in F, MF I also want a medium nib so that I can swap them around if I wanted to. So I checked Amazon and Amazon.jp offers the same identical Sailor 112037420 for either $143.77 (which I found first and put in my basket) or $124.29 (guess what I did). While this looks like a race to the bottom but the yen can only drop that much, I suppose before someone steps in so I am getting while the getting is good. The unfortunate thing for me is that I thought I'd by maybe 1 or 2 Sailor pen. But I learned I like the darn pens quite a bit. To complicate things I just ran across a post and suddenly am in the market for I think it's called a President Platinum? This is worse than crack cocaine.

[DesAstor]

On 7/25/2024 at 1:23 AM, jchch1950 said:

Before the exchange rate changes in direction, now is the opportunity to buy Sailor pens.

Aint that the truth. I just bought a Sailor Ebonite Sculpture for a measly $442 which is close to 50% off. Bc I now have the same types of nibs in F, MF I also want a medium nib so that I can swap them around if I wanted to. So I checked Amazon and Amazon.jp offers the same identical Sailor 112037420 for either $143.77 (which I found first and put in my basket) or $124.29 (guess what I did). While this looks like a race to the bottom but the yen can only drop that much, I suppose before someone steps in so I am getting while the getting is good. The unfortunate thing for me is that I thought I'd by maybe 1 or 2 Sailor pen. But I learned I like the darn pens quite a bit. To complicate things I just ran across a post and suddenly am in the market for I think it's called a President Platinum? This is worse than crack cocaine.

[stephanos]

What I find especially interesting - an ongoing interest; it's hardly new - is the huge range in price by geographical region.

As of today (4 September 2024), the Sailor pen to which the OP linked is $74.87 on Amazon US, but €160 (~$177) on Amazon DE, well over double the price.

I know that there is Value Added Tax (VAT) in Europe (19% in Germany), which may account for some of the difference. I'm not sure to what extent there is sales tax added to online sales in the US. But even so, you can't explain the massive price difference with respect to tax issues. And you also can't explain the difference with reference to purchasing power. Nor by appealing to shipping costs, given that Sailor pens are made in Japan and need to be exported to both North America and Europe.

Such remarkably different regional pricing may have been understandable in a pre-internet world, but now it's just egregious.