Guides
What should I pay for it?
Judging a used asking price is guesswork until you know what the same item costs to land in India brand new. Work that out first, then the rest is arithmetic.
There is no published price guide for VU gear, and any table of rupee figures would be stale within a month — the people in the buy-and-sell groups track real prices better than any website can. So this page does not guess at prices. It gives you the ceiling: what the item costs new, landed, duty paid. Every used price is a discount from that number, and once you have it you can tell a fair offer from an optimistic one in about ten seconds.
Landed cost of the same item, brand new
Take the price from any overseas dealer, add freight, and this applies the duty treatment for the category. The result is your ceiling.
The overseas dealer's price, before Indian duty and GST.
In the same currency as the price above.
This page does not fetch live rates — set it to today's rate yourself.
Indicative only. Duty treatment is taken from community-circulated import guidance (2023–24) also summarised on the safe-buying guide; rates, policy and classification change, individual consignments get assessed on their own facts, and this ignores bank charges and any handling fee your courier adds. Confirm with a customs broker before you commit money. Found it wrong? Tell me.
Used price as a share of landed-new
Rules of thumb, not law. They exist so that an asking price lands somewhere on a scale instead of arriving out of nowhere — and so that you notice when a price is too low, which is its own warning.
| Category | Typical range | What moves it |
|---|---|---|
| Budget handheld (UV-5R class) | 50–70% | The battery is most of the wear. A four-year-old pack is a consumable, not a feature. |
| Branded handheld (Yaesu / Icom / Kenwood) | 55–75% | Holds value well. Check the rotary encoder and that the original charger cradle is included. |
| VHF/UHF mobile or base | 60–75% | Ask whether it has been run into a bad SWR. Finals are the expensive failure. |
| HF transceiver, current model | 65–80% | Still supported, still has resale. A seller who knows this will not go much lower. |
| HF transceiver, discontinued | 45–65% | Price the repair risk in. Ask what spares availability looks like before you commit. |
| Antennas | 50–70% | Bulky and awkward to ship. If it is not local, freight often eats the whole discount. |
| Power supplies (SMPS / linear) | 50–70% | Ask about fan noise and RF hash on receive — the two things a spec sheet will not tell you. |
| Coax, connectors, small accessories | — | Buy new. The saving is small, the failure modes are invisible, and the dispute is not worth it. |
Then adjust for condition
| Condition | Effect on a fair price |
|---|---|
| Original box, invoice and all accessories | +5 to +10% |
| Still inside manufacturer warranty | +10 to +15% |
| Battery over three years old | −10%, or the cost of a genuine replacement |
| Cosmetic marks only, fully functional | no change — do not pay for cosmetics |
| Any "works but…" qualifier | −25% at minimum, and only if you can repair it yourself |
| Seller cannot power it on for a photo | no price is safe — walk away |
When a price is too good
A price well below the band is not a bargain to be grabbed before someone else does — that reflex is precisely what a bad actor is selling. There are only a few honest explanations for a very low price, and all of them survive being asked about: the seller is leaving the hobby and wants it gone, it has a fault they are about to disclose, it is much older than the photo suggests, or it is incomplete.
So ask. "That's well below what these usually go for — what's the catch?" A genuine seller answers it in one line. Anything else tells you what you needed to know, and costs you nothing to have asked.
Next
- Buying and selling used gear safely — verifying a seller, structuring payment, and what to do if it goes wrong
- Station Capability Bench — what your licence and your gear actually let you do
- Getting Started — if this is your first radio