I was speaking to a friend of mine on the matter and he started doing some quick though pretty interesting research.
His findings I think some may find interesting (and they can be applied to much more then the 777).
First, if you like, you can find the tool he used for calculations HERE
And now for the interesting stuff.
The 777 rolled out in 1998 at a price point of $777.
What's the value of $777 today?
Well we can come up with a few ideas here:In 2008, $777.00 from 1998 is worth:
$1,026.32 using the Consumer Price Index
$985.45 using the GDP deflator
$1,058.26 using the value of consumer bundle*
$1,001.73 using the unskilled wage **
$1,150.36 using the nominal GDP per capita
$1,268.56 using the relative share of GDP
* Data for consumer bundle is only available till 2006.
** Data for unskilled wage is relative estimate based on 2007
I'd argue that of all these calculations, the CPI and Consumer Bundle are the most relevant towards figuring out the type of value were really trying to pin down here.
So, when I had been doing regular checks (through numerous channels) about a year ago, the 777 had been sitting at an average going price of $1,150. The more recent check I did (through Ebay only) suggested that it had climbed to about $1,250.
So basically, the 777 has gone up in value A BIT (but not much). In REAL value, it basically simply hasn't gone down.
Further interesting, as I had noted just recently (going by really basic/rough calcs of standard inflation rates), the XS really isn't all that more expensive the 777 was (despite being semi-modular and having a significantly deeper arch).
So lets say we considered an XS+Orb to be the 777 of the 21st century. What would we find if we reversed the direction of our calculations?
Going by the CPI we can gather that roughly $1.32 of today = $1.00 of 1998
so, our new 21st century 777 would run about $1401 back in 1998.
Considering we've arguably more than doubled up on the size of our synth arch, gone modular, and increased sequencer functionality, I don't think that's a bad price at all.
If we do a similar thing between the Mobius and Orb alone, anyway the dice gets cut, the Orb is considerably more expensive beast.
In 2008, $325.00 from 2001 is worth:
$395.11 using the Consumer Price Index
$388.33 using the GDP deflator
$429.31 using the nominal GDP per capita
$458.26 using the relative share of GDP
interesting stuff I think.
One thing it does show is, as has been noted in here on occasion, despite somewhat frequent gripes on pricing, the truth of the matter is that synths are now are cheaper then ever.
