"Paying a little more..."

We were chatting with a customer recently who mentioned they wanted to buy a machine from us because they "didn't trust ebay." Of course implying "they didn't mind paying a little more" for one of our machines.

That forced us to think about our prices, and confront an uncomfortable truth. If you figure the parts and labor we put into the typical machine adds a couple hundred bucks of value (and quite often way more) people are not really "paying a little more" to buy from us.

With the recent crazy price rises on ebay and elsewhere for "yard sale Pavonis," they're actually paying LESS! Ouch.

That's something we haven't wanted to think about too much in our sincere effort to get "Pavonis to the People," but a fact we may have to deal with in the near future. Especially if the popularity and prices of vintage machines keep going up, causing a relentlessly decreasing supply. We've intentionally not been buying machines we know we'll have to end up pricing high, and that's been a big part of the reason (besides rank laziness!) that we seem to be "sold out" all the time.

So if you see prices going up around here, that's the explanation. We don't like it any more than you do. On the other hand, it may be the only way we stop getting the plaintiff emails, "Do you have anything for sale? Everything on your site seems to be sold!")

Life is a balancing act. We're hoping for vintage Pavoni Fever to calm down among the masses. But we have to prepare (at least mentally) for it to get worse.