Okay guys -- MAA will try to look once more for shops. Needed to wait until Koba ships anyways so I won't get that "Huh? Koba?" look from shop keeps.
"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...For he today that sheds his blood with me
shall be my brother."

Wait...did you just talk in the third person?

Brian

Just some update on the VP-70M planned group order.

On my last trip through Hong Kong -- I did try to inquire into buying the Koba VP-70M.

That was approximately 10 days ago. At that time none of the big shops (GnG, DenTrin, etc.) had even an expected price nevermind stock to sell. GnG in particular was very elusive saying they couldn't fill big orders of 10 or more may be only 1-2 guns as there was a waiting list of 100 or more from his internet operation.

Today we have a published price of US$194 from DenTrin, while GnG is "PLEASE CALL" status.

10 days ago -- I got a price quote from another shop in AS Central who said they could sell as many as needed but the price (which was not confirmed) was actually slightly higher than DenTrin's published price.

So, at this point -- we still haven't found a suppliers that has all the desired terms to offered: i.e. the ability to supply around 12 guns or more, and offer a volume discount on the purchase.

So, for my part -- I will continue to search for such a supplier, and if successful -- I will notify everyone here.

Just as a general commentary -- the VP-70M is being advertised in all major AS magazines in Japan, and all shops in H.K. are planning on stocking it. During these early stages of this new product being introduced -- the demand is high in the home market and in H.K.. I would vernture to guess that both available guns and pricing may cool a bit after the initial rush for everyone to try and get this gun.


"We few, we happy few, we band of brothers...For he today that sheds his blood with me
shall be my brother."Edited by: [url=http://pub217.ezboard.com/bthealienslegacy.showUserPublicProfile?gid=menatarms>MENATARMS[/url] at: 4/19/04 12:24 am

Are you able to speak to them in Cantonese? It's sad, but it's been my experience that non-chinese speakers tend to get screwed in prices much more often than the locals.
I've always had relatively more "honest" treatment when speaking to them in fluent Cantonese. If you can't speak the local language, they look at you with $$$ signs. I've seen it happen to non-locals in many of the shops there.
There's also the possibility that they're concerned that you're simply going to take these VP-70s and sell them online to make a profit yourself, thereby taking customers away from them. Looks like we may not be able to get a group discount per se, but there's no reason why we'd have to pay higher than HK street prices. Once these are in-stock and in the shop windows I'd be really curious as to how the street vs. online prices compare.

Thanks for looking so far, MAA

-Alex