Inflation?

[Jose the tuba player]

...the average selling price of beat-up/restorable American-made sousaphones (and even American sousaphone complete VALVE sections) on eBay (at least according to my arm's length non-scientific observations) has gone WAY up...

...so is there more demand for sousaphones from individuals (??), or has the fact that new American-made sousaphones prices have skyrocketed up to $7000 - $8000 just "generally" affected the selling prices of old/beat-up ones? (A rust-belt-located overhaul mill quotes only $1600 for a complete sousaphone overhaul, so if an old/beat-up American sousaphone can be acquired at around $1000 on eBay, a total restored cost (with a case, and some shipping costs) of under $3500 (or - even with a deluxe ASP valve rebuild - still under $4000) is a pretty good savings over the cost of a (thin-wall) new one, isn't it?

Even new Taiwanese sousaphones are over $6000 and the only (imo) acceptable Communist Chinese ones are now over $2000.

the prices have gone way UP!, however if you look closer it is always the same few bidders on every sousaphone, my repair guy pointed one of his resalers out to me and said " he f@#ked up the market, not only does he not play , he doesnt care how much he bids up as long as he wins" and even his other resalers complain about him. there is a demand in places like here in los angeles where the banda scene is growing, many resalers go to mexico and sell tubas there as they can fetch way more than here in the us. the demand here has gotten so bad many schools had their tubas and sousaphones stolen in the past 2-3 years and its still a problem

[Donn]

The moral of the story seems to be that Mexican buyers are willing to pay more, because it isn't as easy to steal a school horn there? I probably missed something there.

[Jose the tuba player]

.

[ghmerrill]

Inflation is a derivative (and abstract economic) concept. Inflation is determined by the change in prices over time -- rather than prices being determined by inflation. This is really pretty much what everyone else has been saying as well. You can try to use the measure of inflation/deflation to estimate what a reasonable price for something "should" be, but this is doing things backwards, and the results will not be particularly sensible or reliable.