Here's the thing - I think I might go ahead and buy the GH1 as soon as it becomes available. I don't know if I can recoup the $1500 cost.

But... I figure if it turns out not to be a worthwhile investment, I can turn around and sell it. I figure if I can get at least 2/3rds the money back, it won't be so bad if it turns out that, for whatever reason, I can't use it, or I don't use it. $1500 is too much to risk, $500 isn't...

Sound like a good plan or a poor one?

I expect the resale value will depend at least partially on two unpredicable things:

1) What Panasonic does with the purchase price for new GH1s in the future

2) What the competition (Canon/Nikon/RED/Sony/Samsung etc) release in the mean time.

I'm in a similar boat. I'm about to buy a GH1 but I'm planning to sell it when the Scarlet S35 is released. We'll see.

I'd expect the GH1 to depreciate by 50% over the next 6 months. But that's a total guess. I haven't done any extensive market research or anything. Who knows. Perhaps the GH1 will hold its value well. If, say, a decent theatrically released feature film is shot on the GH1 then that may help the GH1 to maintain its resale value well.

Don't be too pessemistic. If this cam turns out to be like another one of Panny's cams in the past (the PV GS400) then it will definitely retain its value. There are tons of folks, including myself, that want this cam.

Don't be so sure that the GH-1 price will remain stable, a look at the price of the non-video version the G-1 will show that Panasonic has discounted it heavily in some markets in the few months since it was released. In the UK it has gone down about a third in price on the high street since launch. I think it would be better to compare it to the 5dmkII in terms of how well it holds its value, if I sold mine now I would only expect to get around half of what I got new because I bought on the first day the camera shipped and paid top dollar. The new price has now come down a few hundred bucks.

Dan