Uesugi UTY-7 phono stage

Perhaps this will be of limited usefulness but, I believe....
It was sold in a limited edition in the early 90s (replaced by the Bros-20 (a single chassis phono pre) in the mid-90s). It had an MSRP of JPY 350,000, which would have been about $2800-3000 back in early 90s dollars. It had a great reputation when it was originally built and still has a pretty good reputation locally (in Japan). I haven't seen one for sale for months - I would say they usually come up once or twice a year on the Yahoo Auctions (local version of fleapay) and less often than that on HiFiDo. Not quite hens' teeth but certainly not just there for the asking. I do not have a clue what they go for, though Uesugi has decent resale value in Japan, AND this has a rep, AND it is rare,which means that while I would normally expect a secondary market value 40-50% range of MSRP given its age, Uesugi gets a better secondhand premium that that, and the UTY-7 is probably even a bit better (though that is just speculation on my part).

I have not listened to it and personally do not know anyone who has ever had one. If I found one for cheap (say, $1k or so), I might buy it just to see what it was like, because I would be pretty sure to be able to sell it afterwards.

Thanks for the info T_bone,
The price of this is indeed around 40% of original retail so I'm also tempted to get it on spec. I have just made the reservation on audiounion (japanese used store similiar to hifido)so i'll have a look at it over the weekend. I've only just recently discovered uesugi products and find them quite interesting. You are right in that they seem to be very popular in japan.
I'm hoping it will be a marked improvement over my current stand alone phono stage - Trigon vanguard II, which is relatively budget compared to the Uesugi.
Uesugi do not seem to have their own website which seems to be same for several other japanese companies, highphonic for example.
Anyway, thanks again

Hmmm... I looked on Audiounion after i wrote that (because they occasionally have Uesugi stuff, and they are one of the only places to have Linear Technology stuff) and I did not notice it. I guess that means you live in Tokyo too though... Pity that it is tough to test much in their stores... That said, I would imagine that for 140k yen you could do a lot worse (but I know nothing of the Trigon), and if you decide you don't like it, it will not lose you much (if anything) if you decide to sell it on YahooAuc.

Have never seen a website for Hiphonic. For some reason, I thought that Uesugi was being distributed by someone like Esoteric, but I could be wrong. You might try their website (not TEAC/Esoteric but the Japanese website).

I presume audiounion took off the listing once they recieved my reservation for the uesugi. You're right about the distribution of Uesugi. I noticed that Esoteric have a link to the UT-50 integrated amp. However, I wonder if this is a joint venture between the two companies as the website does not include other models of uesugi.

Btw, you guessed right - moved from UK to Tokyo couple of years back and have since discovered a new found past-time of buying up old vinyl LPs in recofan and diskunion. Any other recommendations would be gratefully appreciated.