Street Price for cards?
 

I have been making a lot of enquiries from importers here in Australia re. SanDisk sxs cards, as we only have (full retail - AU$1,299.00 for 16 gig) prices on Sony cards here, but I believe Sandisk aren't going to bring them into Australia for a while at least.

Does anyone have any contacts to a card supplier who will be handling the Sandisk (or sony) cards, as I feel there are quite a few of us wanting some competiton for pricing on SXS cards.

Cheers Vaughan

Further to this for Aussie guys, I had a price on the Sandisk 16 gig from an independent importer in Sydney, but it was basically the same price as the Sony 16 gig here in melbourne.

Sad!

Vaughan

Probably help to buy in bulk. A$1140 (inc GST) for 16 Gb may be possible. My present plan is to see how I go with the 8Gb cards, downloading through laptop to external USB HDD. In theory one can shoot all day doing that, but I suspect that won't work in any run & gun job (unless supported by dedicated person). The belief under-lying this is that the cost of cards will fall as production ramps up, which may be delusional!

Serena,

I was talking to an Australian Sandisk & Sony card reseller yesterday, and he said that Sandisk Australia are notoriously slow to pick up on new cards...up to 6 months after their American release before they appear on their price lists.

He also said that Sandisk overseas tend to wait a month after first release of the cards, and then go hard at the market to win market share, so he thought our best bet would be find a reliable reseller in the States just after Xmas and see what sort of deal we could get.

Vaughan

Vaughan, sounds like a good scheme. And we have our compatriots in Sydney who are powerful negotiators!

Sony SBAC-US10 SxS Memory Card USB Reader/Writer for ExpressCard/34
 

At the other end of things, what is special about the SxS card reader. At the roadshow it was stated that any laptop/desktop (Sony, at least) had an card socket that would read the cards. But the cost of the Sony reader is way out in front of all other card readers. Why?

Getting prices on the cards here in the states has been awful.

I finally had one vendor get a price of $1200 USD for the 16 gig cards. The vendor told me they would sell for around $950.

That is more than I thought they would go for. I had budgeted to buy 3 but will now get only 2 (I will get two 8 gig cards with the camera).

Hopefully the price will drop on the cards. Right now they are about the same as the P2 cards.

Dan Weber

I'm sure that when these cards are fully available, those prices will turn out to be much too high (in the sense that the cards will be available for a lot less at other vendors).

Just my opinion.

Things can change but the September press release from Sandisk had the list price for 16GB as $900 and 8GB for $500. Given those are list prices one would think the actual "street" price would be lower, not higher . . . unless prices have risen for some reason.

$1200 USD? That's a mistake; as Craig said the MSRP is $900 for 16GB.

Barry, I am just quoting what the vendor told me. They are the first one to actually give me a price on the cards. Their price on the camera was very good. Maybe they are trying to make it back on the cards.

Sony is keeping everything so secret. One vendor told me the problem was that there are only 40 Cinealta dealers in the whole country. Sony is trying to figure out how to expand the distribution of the camera since they are badging it as a Cinealta camera. They want to do a mass distribution of the camera. This may be why there is a delay in information coming out of Sony.

Dan Weber

Bingo!

This is one of the reasons why we recommend only our trusted DV Info Net site sponsors:

http://www.dvinfo.net/sponsors

There are 3 dealers in NYC selling the camera that I know of (I believe another couple of dealers will be added). Two are on the DVInfo list. One who I trust (really really trust) is not on that list unfortunately.

Chris,

I have contacted several of the vendors on your list but some still have not gotten back to me with quotes. The one that did gave a good price when I contacted them, but quickly raised it when they sent me a written quote.

I have not made a final purchase decision, but I needed a written quote to submit with my purchase request (corporate world). Getting one was a lot harder than I thought it would be.

The problem is the camera is not out yet and Sony is being tight lipped with their pricing info.

I can always buy the camera from one dealer and the cards from another if needed.

Dan Weber

Shows $880 US for 16GB card. That's in line with the $900 I mentioned before.