I believe that KEH's ratings principally depict cosmetic condition and
is aimed largely at collectors... witness the high premium for the top
end of the scale. They may also do a cursory function test but I don't
believe that it's as exhaustive as checking shutter speeds which
explains the results here. It's probably cheaper to assume the gear
works and fix or exchange what doesn't.
I can remember folks here in the past (maybe more than 10 years ago)
explaining how it was possible to call KEH and have a rep go fetch the
item in question, examine it and even compare it to another sample.
What I discovered when I tried that a year of so ago was that the sales
reps didn't have access to the stock room. Furthermore, items were sold
packaged exactly as advertised. If there was a BGN lens without a hood
and an EXC+ lens with a hood it was not possible to buy the hood from
the EXC+ lens to go with the BGN lens. It appears to me that everything
is prepackaged just as it's advertised and no substitutions are made.
That said, I have never bought anything from KEH other than BGN grade
and have always been more than satisfied with what I received. On the
other hand, I don't believe I've ever bought an OM camera body from them
or a manual focus lens... things that would be old enough to to
demonstrate common age related deterioration like sticky diaphragms or
crumbling foam.
Chuck Norcutt
On 12/2/2010 12:34 PM, John Hermanson wrote:
> Recently I saw "several" OM-2N which both had serious defects. Not
> listed as "BGN", looked very good cosmetically. High shutter speeds all
> over the map, good hinge foam but rotted slot foam. My customer just
> received them from KEH and probably could have returned them. He didn't
> know of the defects in the first place, but opted to pay for service
> rather than hope they would fix everything after complaining.
>
> ___________________________________
> John Hermanson | CPS, Inc.
> 21 South Ln., Huntington NY 11743
> 631-424-2121 | www.zuiko.com
> Olympus OM Service since 1977
> Gallery: www.zuiko.com/album/index.html
>
> On 12/2/2010 12:10 PM, AS wrote:
>> Does KEH's bargain grade mean that the item is not functional or is
>> it pure cosmetic? I.e., will a bgn grade lens have fungus or marks?
--
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