smussler Loc: Land O Lakes, FL - Formerly Miller Place, NY

I've been using cheap P&S digital camera's for past 15 years. I used Minolta SLR film cameras back in the day. Finally decided to get back to SLRs. Read lots of reviews and decided what I wanted. Started then to see where I could get the best deal. Abe's of Maine jumped out at me. At that point, the price seemed too good and I had never heard the terminology "gray market" at that point.

So I almost bought a gray market camera, not to save a few dollars, but because I was completely ignorant about the gray market merchandise that's out there. I've since read, that even Walmart is selling Gray Market stuff - nor sure it that is true or not. I myself like to save a few dollars, but one sometimes gets what they paid for.

I ended up buying at Cameta, as their store is relatively close by to me. I've also bought three additional used lenses off of eBay. I've made over 1500 purchases via eBay, so I'm quite familiar with that market place. Using PayPal, it's hard to go wrong. I bought a defective item from a seller who stated in his listing that he didn't take returns. Once Pay Pal got involved, the seller accepted my return, or I should say - he was forced to accept my return.

. . . just had to respond, when you said saving money amazed you . . . - reworded that a bit.
I saved about $500 on my eBay purchased lens - 2 Nikon DX Macros (Micro in Nikon speak) with US serial numbers and a Sigma 100-400 zoom.

my 2¢ . . .

dat2ra Loc: Sacramento

Hmm
I bought my D850 from Abe's and had no problems.

aellman Loc: Boston MA

[quote=Gene51]They've been around since the late 1800s.[/quot

Yes, Willoughbys was actually the foremost provider of wet collodion process chemicals and supplies. I know because Matthew Brady and I were their biggest customers.