[Dottore]

I decided to sell off my old photo equipment and put an ad on Craigslist. Guy rings me and says he’s very keen to purchase just the body of one of my old Leicas.

I say, I’d rather sell everything together, but if you just want the body, make me an offer.

He offers me $1,400.- and I accept this as a fair price for the body—which is in perfect mechanical condition, and very lightly used, but which is a 20 year old camera.

We meet at a Starbucks, he examines the body minutely, and then hands me $1,400.-, and we part happily. He tells me he’s going out to “push a few rolls of films through it right away”.

The following day he rings me up, and tells me he was at his local camera shop, and the guy behind the counter told him he just sold a similar body that a guy traded in on a digital camera for $800.- I tell him yeah, that can happen. Camera shops often sell analog trade-ins at below market just to get rid of them.

He says he didn’t know this. I say it’s a notorious fact, that he should have known. (He’s a photojournalist who already owns a few Leicas.)

Then he says, I promised to him to take it back if he wasn’t happy with it. I replied, no I said I would take it back if it is “not working perfectly” (my words—which I chose carefully).

He then says, well he also found some humidity in the viewfinder, and the guy in the camera shop told him this could turn to mold.

I said what humidity? (We both looked through the viewfinder in the Starbucks and there was no humidity.) He says, its there in a corner if you look carefully.

I’m nonplussed by this, because the camera has been in dry storage for a long time, and I swear there was no humidity in the viewfinder. I tell him this and suggest he take a hair dryer to it for a few minutes and any humidity will be gone. He says, no the camera is defective and he paid too much for it, and the guy at the shop told him it would cost $500 to take the camera apart and have the humidity taken out, and he wants his money back.

So clearly to me this is a case of "buyers remorse"—and nothing more. He’s a nice guy, but I want to sell the camera, and now have two other buyers for the remaining pieces of the package that this clown broke up by just buying one body.

What would you do? I hate bad karma, but I’m inclined to tell the guy to take a hike. He bought the thing. In fact he suggested the price. And I have no idea what he’s done with the camera in the intervening day.