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Selling McCormack Upgraded Gear

No, I'm not selling mine - huh-uh, no way, never. Well, not unless I go to monoblocks.

Anyway, I notice most people agree McCormack's revisions make his gear comparable to stuff at much higher prices, yet I've noticed sellers on a'gon have relative difficulty selling the modded stuff at even reasonable prices (the Rev. A DNA-0.5 seems to be an exception for some reason.)

As an example, someone had monoblock rev. A DNA-1's on here, couldn't sell them at $3600 through classifieds, and I think he then auctioned them. I didn't get to see the final price, but I think the bid was about $2750 with half an hour left. There's a rev. A RLD-1 for $2600 that has been listed for over 2 months now.

Anyone have insight on why it's so difficult to sell these pieces? As a follow-up, are you losing money when you sell modded equipment across the board, or do some mods "hold their value" in resale, so to speak?
aggielaw
jependleton
155 posts
 
I have several pieces of McCormack gear myself and have had several people in the "audiophile" community get a good chuckle out of that, and a few have called it junk. That may have something to do with the lack of bidders and buyers here. Oh well, I've never really been trendy, but, like you, I don't have any intentions of selling my McCormack gear either.
4yanx
1,576 posts
 
Me either
jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
'Anyone have insight on why it's so difficult to sell these pieces? As a follow-up, are you losing money when you sell modded equipment across the board, or do some mods "hold their value" in resale, so to speak?'

It's nothing personal against the McCormack gear, in fact McCormack's upgrades hold their value better than most. In my experiences modified gear does not recoup good re-sale value. I'm not saying any mod is not worth the price paid, but the original person who has the mods done will be lucky if they can recover more than 25% of their modification investment. I love modified equipment, especially from certain modifiers, but I'd wait and look to buy a used one already modified rather than take that hit myself.
I have a unit modded by a certain famous mod company. I basically paid what the average used price of a stock unit was, plus 25% of the initial modification price. So the guy that had the unit modified lost 75% of his mod 'investment'.

Bottom line, mods may well sound great, and hopefully they make you want to keep the unit for a long time, but they won't get you the return on your investment that you'd want them too. So it's either be happy with them, or take a bath selling them. I've been on both sides of the fence, I know.

Regards,
John
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