Selling McCormack Upgraded Gear

I have several pieces of McCormack gear myself and have had several people in the "audiophile" community get a good chuckle out of that, and a few have called it junk. That may have something to do with the lack of bidders and buyers here. Oh well, I've never really been trendy, but, like you, I don't have any intentions of selling my McCormack gear either.

Me either

'Anyone have insight on why it's so difficult to sell these pieces? As a follow-up, are you losing money when you sell modded equipment across the board, or do some mods "hold their value" in resale, so to speak?'

It's nothing personal against the McCormack gear, in fact McCormack's upgrades hold their value better than most. In my experiences modified gear does not recoup good re-sale value. I'm not saying any mod is not worth the price paid, but the original person who has the mods done will be lucky if they can recover more than 25% of their modification investment. I love modified equipment, especially from certain modifiers, but I'd wait and look to buy a used one already modified rather than take that hit myself.
I have a unit modded by a certain famous mod company. I basically paid what the average used price of a stock unit was, plus 25% of the initial modification price. So the guy that had the unit modified lost 75% of his mod 'investment'.

Bottom line, mods may well sound great, and hopefully they make you want to keep the unit for a long time, but they won't get you the return on your investment that you'd want them too. So it's either be happy with them, or take a bath selling them. I've been on both sides of the fence, I know.

Regards,
John

I'm not really sure WHY the lack of return on the amount invested in mods. Maybe it has to do with some "untrust" in that the mods were ALL done by a reputable "modder" (like Steve McCormack) or an uncertainty that other things might have also been tried by the owner themselves. Maybe people feel that labor depreciates at a higher rate than the sometimes les significant cost of the parts used, I don't know.

My opinion is that one shouldn't go into a decision to mod with the specific idea of reselling but, rather, the idea of making the piece sound its best for their own pleasure. Otherwise, if your main concern is protecting some investment, maybe it is better to keep searching and replacing unmodded pieces until you find the one with which you’re happy - which, of course, could cost one even more in the long run.

With respect to my modded DNA-225, I went into it with the hope that it would sound SO good that I'd be keeping it for the VERY, VERY long-haul, but knowing that if it fell short, I'd not get back what I paid. Fortunately, but not surprisingly, I'll not be worrying about recouping my investment while I enjoy this very fine piece! :-)