Wholesale value
Discussion
Wholesale value I have no idea. The best price I found was here:-
http://www.ephotocraft.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=0182080...
The sterling equivalent price is £2,450 as opposed to over £3,400 in the UK.
However, I assume you are going to the USA to get one. Having it delivered here would incur taxes and VAT and isn't worth it. I collect mine at the beginning of September over there - they are delivering it to my B&B. Be very careful about spurious offers and check out the dealers ratings with bizrate.com or epinions.com. This company got top marks as do B&H and 17th St Photo in New York. The lens is not easy to find and is often out of stock so they will need you to do a money wire transfer before you leave to hold it for you. It has taken quite a few weeks to get mine.
http://www.ephotocraft.com/itemdesc.asp?ic=0182080...
The sterling equivalent price is £2,450 as opposed to over £3,400 in the UK.
However, I assume you are going to the USA to get one. Having it delivered here would incur taxes and VAT and isn't worth it. I collect mine at the beginning of September over there - they are delivering it to my B&B. Be very careful about spurious offers and check out the dealers ratings with bizrate.com or epinions.com. This company got top marks as do B&H and 17th St Photo in New York. The lens is not easy to find and is often out of stock so they will need you to do a money wire transfer before you leave to hold it for you. It has taken quite a few weeks to get mine.
Edited by lowdrag on Friday 27th July 21:59
Yes I am taking advantage of the £-$ rate. However even allowing for delivery, duty and VAT I am still saving £700. So rather than fly to the States I am getting one delivered from a known dealer. I decided at the end of the day I had more to loose not declaring it coming through customs so for the sake of c£600 (duty and VAT) am going to play it by the book.
As you quite rightly say they are quite hard to track down but Nikon USA delivered a stock to their dealers on Thursday...interestingly B&H were sold out in 24 hours.
The reason for my question was that I noticed a courier service offering to reduce duty and VAT costs and the way they do that is to put on the invoice the wholesale price as opposed to the retail price, however the catch is the insurance value is obviously the lower of the two.
I wonder why customs have a 6.7% duty on lenses whereas cameras it is c3% doesnt make sense...but there again it is rip off Britain
As you quite rightly say they are quite hard to track down but Nikon USA delivered a stock to their dealers on Thursday...interestingly B&H were sold out in 24 hours.
The reason for my question was that I noticed a courier service offering to reduce duty and VAT costs and the way they do that is to put on the invoice the wholesale price as opposed to the retail price, however the catch is the insurance value is obviously the lower of the two.
I wonder why customs have a 6.7% duty on lenses whereas cameras it is c3% doesnt make sense...but there again it is rip off Britain
If you get the retailer to ship the invoice/receipt seperately as a letter and then mark the packaging for the lense with 'Sample'/'Demonstration Purposes Only' and include a return address label it makes it look like you're getting the lense on loan for demonstrating to people and therefore may well escape the VAT/Import Duty. It is a technique I've seen being used by many distributors sending items to the UK from Hong Kong via e-bay. HTH
Most unlikely they will do that. The reason is that their insurance requires them to declare the value of the package, so that in the event of breakage or loss they can declare the correct value. If they declare the wholesale price then all they'll get back is that so in effect they haven't made anything. B&H surely won't - I asked them. The company I mentioned in Washington will have stock shortly and 17th St Photo show that they have stock.
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