What's happened to the used high end market recently?? Sales are tough....:0(

Has been discussed regularly on Audiogon. Here are some prior responses/thoughts:
1. Culture places less importance on musical activities, thus less demand for HEA
2. Listening has migrated to streaming and quality is sometimes unavailable, sometimes not of interest
3. Listening styles have moved away from demanding content (such as classical and jazz) to pop and hip hop that requires less HEA
4. Americans have less disposable income (paid your health bill recently?)
5. Younger generations are visually oriented and prefer video games over straight listening sessions
6. And get ready for the "no everything is great and HEA is thriving like never before" responses -- worthwhile checking to see if these are made by industry people...

Yes, the size of the market continues to age and ebb away. It’s not gonna get any easier. In fact with the economy rolling right now, this may be as good as it gets by far.

Some new blood is coming up from the high-end headphone crowd, but it’s not feeding into 2ch staples like speakers and monoblocks (maybe just DACs, at best). And Audiogon lost a good chunk of its traffic to the site rewrite some years ago -- older folks don’t like to adapt to tech, and get easily/permanently frustrated. Maybe they should’ve kept both systems up while they refined the new site (which I do like, now that the bugs have been worked out).

But also, a lot of sellers don’t seem to have a clue that they’re pricing items way too high. You gotta be realistic, and the #s you find in the BlueBook/etc are often FAR off a sellable price. And the worst trap is getting stuck holding the bag with at item that was a "flavor of the month" flash in the pan. A couple years on, and you may find you can’t even give it away.

+1 mulveling

Millennials. I don't think many of them buy new or used HEA. The older generation audiophiles are dying off. Most of the younger generation I talk to have little to no interest in HEA. They like music mostly of the portable variety and seem to listen more as a distraction than anything else. I do believe there are a few younger ones out there that like HEA, but no where near enough to support the hobby. JMHO.