Huge SxS Price Increase

[Steve Kalle]

Just noticed the 32GB Pro went to $1009.95 on B&H from 879 and SxS-1A went from $579 to $746.

On Abel Cine's website, no prices are shown for SxS cards. However, Tapeworks still has normal pricing.

Last I heard, only a few factories were damaged having to do with Blu-ray discs, magnetic heads and batteries.

Has anyone seen other spikes in prices?

[Andrew Stone]

I am not surprised about a price increase but I am surprised it has happened so quickly.

The value of the Yen has shot up since the earthquake/nuclear disaster. Counter intuitive, yes. I heard that a lot of flash ram facilities in general were destroyed (not Sony specific). Not sure if that plays into the SxS card siutation or not.

I am wondering if the price of cameras from all the Japanese manufacturers are going to shoot up as well.

It should be kept in mind that memory inventories are deliberately kept low, in general, due to price volatility.

[John Peterson]

Are we going to have the same people jump in here and state what they usually state when many of us use SDHC instead of SxS of other "official" media?:

"You get what you pay for".

Markets are markets. You don't get what you pay for. You get what the market determines it will bear in terms of price. Today's Economics 101.

John

[Marcus Durham]

I wonder if this is retailers exploiting the situation or if there are supply chain issues. The problem with SxS is the supply chain is so narrow which is how the prices are controlled. There's no interest from any other company in bringing out their own version because the market is small which would bring prices down. The high price is down to lack of competition and it being a tiny market. After all, how many SxS cards are sold compared to Compact Flash or SDHC every day?

SDHC may rise but not hugely, as production is not just from a single source. Sandisk state they are 500 miles from the disaster zone and their plants were only down for a short time and resumed production the following day. Overall impact on their output is "minimal".

Which begs the question, don't Sandisk produce the SxS cards for Sony?

As for other goods who knows. Companies like Sony operate globally these days although all my cameras were made in Japan itself, even my VG10 which I half expected to be made in China.

[Don Greening]

Originally Posted by Marcus Durham

Which begs the question, don't Sandisk produce the SxS cards for Sony?

They used to but I don't know if that's still the case. It's generally believed that the "S by S" moniker stands for "Sony by Sandisk."

- Don

[Nicholas de Kock]

In the year that I've owned my EX1 I've never used any SxS cards, I use SDHC 32Gb Transcend Class 10 cards which work flawlessly - two cards give me almost 4 hours of shooting time.

[Vincent Oliver]

The bottom line on all this is, don't panic buy! The price of memory will drop again, it just seems that there are a few sharp people out there who will exploit every situation. Aren't most memory cards made in China anyway?

[Andrew Stone]

Good advice Vincent.