I have been wanting to repurchase my turntables for quite some time now.  Back in 2003 or 2004 I believe I had a pair of Technics 1200M3G and had to sell them due to some money problems.  Since then I’ve always wanted to buy another set of Techs.  I have been keeping my eye on turntables and prices for a while now.  I usually use Google’s shopping option and or just go straight to Amazon.com.  I noticed that within the past year the Technics 1210M5G have been increasing in price and then going back down.  I saw it at its lowest price of around $550.00.  Right now, if you were to check prices today, 2/6/10, it is now at $899.99.  That’s a $349.99 price increase.  Sometimes it will go back down to $799 which was just a few days ago.  I understand the laws of supply and demand but I think this is just straight up price gouging.

On top of that, there was a leak somewhere, within the past six months, that Technics was going to stop production on their 1200 series turntables due to low sales.  This only HELPED the sales of Technics as people started to hoard turntables and the retailers saw that people were going crazy so they upped the price knowing that people would buy regardless since everyone thought that the production was truly going to stop on these tables.

Come to find out there was no production stoppage nor was Panasonic going to discontinue the tables.  I was disappointed and so were many others but that’s the way these types of viral marketing campaigns work.

So in the end, I will be buying a pair of tables soon regardless of the price, unfortunately.  I would love it to go back down to $550.00 as that is an ideal price range for me.  However, if I have to pay the cut throat $899.99, I will.