I can't comment about the past. Whatever it was is history now. I'm just talking about a folks selling several year old radios for over a grand that cost around 1200 to 1400 BRAND NEW!
Because there are plenty of people out there willing to pay it....
You take a radio that's 15 years old, that has X amount of features. This radio cost $500.00 dollars at the time of purchase.
You take a brand new radio with the same features built into a fancy new box, it does everything the older radio does but costs $1,200.00.
You find the 15 year old radio listed on eBay, it was kept in a smoke free home, original owner, has the box it came in and all the paperwork, and there isn't a damn thing wrong with it. The seller lists a starting bit of $300.00 with no reserve.....
Now the question is.....is he asking too much......?
at $300.00....probably not, the radio is most likely worth every cent, but once the bidding ends 7 days later that radio could end up fetching $600.00 to maybe even $800.00 because it does everything the $1,200.00 brand new radio does, but at close to half the cost, and the newly licensed ham gets on the air with money left over for antennas, antenna tuner, coax and all the other accessory equipment he still needs to build a beginner's shack.....
The manufacturers dictate the "brand new" market, we hams dictate the used gear market through our willingness to pay higher than normal prices for used gear.
I'm just as guilty of this as anyone, I've done it out of ignorance of what something is really worth, and I've done it because I saw something I wanted, the blinders went on, and I didn't step back and carefully thing about what I was doing, or shop for the item in different markets to possibly find it cheaper.....
The general economy may or may not have a bearing on the ham radio market, but we as ham's do, our willingness to purchase new geat or only shop for used equipment has a lot to do with it, and I know this will be taken badly by many, but in my experience the vast majority of hams I have encountered over the years were and still are a very frugal bunch.
The questions have been asked before on the WWRF as to why Uniden stopped making SSB CB radios, and why Kenwood seems to be slowly backing out of the ham radio market with their reduction models offered, it's because of too main reasons.....competition from other manufactures, and the ham radio community's unwillingness to purchase new equipment in the same numbers as we purchase used equipment. Let's face it, the manufacturer only profits once on every unit sold, that unit could change hands a million times, but the manufacturer only gets his cut the first time around, after that he has to depend on us to buy more new stuff, if we don't then he has to cut production, discontinue models, or venture into other areas with higher market demand. Uniden has done this with scanners and weather radios, and Kenwood is doing this with the commercial and emcomm radio market.
