Is the Racer killing sales of most other detectors

Now I do not sell detectors - just buy them - but it seems that at least right now - lots of detectors are for sale and seems like there are a lot of people waiting for the next Racer shipment. I wonder if dealers are feeling it too. No racer and reduced sales of all there other products. Even the Kings are falling - Etrac, Deus, CTX, F75, ATPro, MXT. The only other detector that seems to be getting some attention is the F19. So is this just an impression or are sales down except for Racer and some F19 sales?

P.S. Ignoring entry level detectors like Ace and F2, Etc,,,,

Bryanna - Nebraska

Current - New to me but not new MXT Pro and T2 SE2 - Previous Minelab Sovereign GT, Minelab Safari, Whites DFX, Whites Eagle Spectrum
Smile its a good for you!

I would say right now the racer is outselling the F19 and other detectors..When the deus updates comes and it is what they say it will be then that may trump the racer...

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!

The MXT and E Trac are fine detectors. Some of the deepest out there. But they have been around for years. The F-75 got a jolt with the update and I think this Summer you will see some incredible finds posted by it's users. The CTX is costly. It had a good bump last year from the beach hunters. It seems the Sovereign and Excal guys have bought into it. The Deus will get a bump with the update and possible new coil if rumors are to be believed. But it took one to the chin in the king of iron claims thanks to the Racer. The AT Pro is still doing really well. Garrett did so well with it that they never really concerned themselves with the top of their lineup replacements. The Racer fever will be replaced by another detector down the road. But it certainly goes down in my book as the most hyped detector in quite a long time. And that was probably due to lack of competition, good marketing by Makro (listening to the forums), a hard Winter, and the performance of it's cousin the Fors Core being hyped too.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2015 02:10AM by goodmore.

I wouldn't say hype it had it's big brother already out and doing well and becoming a top dog unit..the racer had testers that said what they wanted to say and the company posted on the forums. This is the way all top compaines should run things

LowBoy

TAKE A LITTLE TIME KICKBACK AND WATCH SOME OF MY DETECTING VIDEO'S BELOW ON YouTube

[www.youtube.com]

If you don’t dig it, then how are you going to know what you’re missing!
How can you have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat!

Yea too much good trustworthy reports to call it hype let's call it highly publicized and attention getting.

CTX had lots of attention but it cost two grand plus. The Racer at $850 with two coils and other goodies is very approachable

Bryanna - Nebraska

Current - New to me but not new MXT Pro and T2 SE2 - Previous Minelab Sovereign GT, Minelab Safari, Whites DFX, Whites Eagle Spectrum
Smile its a good for you!

Cant comment on sales of new units, but used units arent holding their value like they once were...Great time to buy.

Some dealers cant seem to keep them in stock. Others haven't sold the first one. I was at Don's shop at North GA Relics and he had several of them in stock.

I dont really think so..I think there is alot of talk about the racer but I would like to see actual sales figures. There is a sponsor on tnet who still hasnt sold 2 pro packs he got in the first shipment and also a few from american dealers on ebay.

Don't kid yourself when it comes to deep turf silver the Etrac/Explorer's and Fisher Cz's are still king of the hill!

In my nasty yellow / orange clay/ rocks, I'll take my Racer, thank you.

Harold -- Myabe in your neck of the woods but not in mine. I've had the CZ-70 and CZ3D, as well as Explorer II, eTrac, and CTX. While each hold their place...from what I've seen thus far in my soil,the Racer beats them on depth. Especially with the small coil.

Most of the Racer talk is on this forum. My dealer who is a distributor for 3 brands never heard of the Racer until I pointed it out to him a couple of days ago.....Jack

I figure of the 10% of metal detector users who actually frequent detecting forums, maybe only 10% of them care about the Racer. So, no, I don't think the Racer is killing sales of other detectors. Especially as more info gets posted about them.

HH
Mike

Deeptech and Blisstool were supposed to do that too.

jackintexas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Most of the Racer talk is on this forum. My dealer
> who is a distributor for 3 brands never heard of
> the Racer until I pointed it out to him a couple
> of days ago.....Jack


This...head to some of the other forums. You'll either find them completely unaware, completely uninterested, or you'll see a bunch of posts from guys whose names seem eerily familiar...

Mike Hillis Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I figure of the 10% of metal detector users who
> actually frequent detecting forums, maybe only 10%
> of them care about the Racer. So, no, I don't
> think the Racer is killing sales of other
> detectors. Especially as more info gets posted
> about them.
>
> HH
> Mike


Agree with above post, went to a club hunt with 20+ hunters, pulled out my FORS CoRe and none had ever heard of it or the Macro Racer

I have to agree to Mike. Very few hunters know about it that arent on the forums. Then it wouldnt be my first choice for beach hunting either. Most of us grew up with the well known companies here in the U.S.. Not everyone uses a lot of different brands or are even exposed to them. I know some very experienced hunters..... cant get them to change whats worked for years. Thou there is a market for those of us well informed hunters looking for an edge and willing to switch and pay the price. Also for a good many hunters who switch machines there is a learning curve and during this time finds can suffer. Bad decission to write off a new machine until you put some time in on it. Machines are like shoes ..... sometimes it just fits nicely.

I think interest in the Racer has waned slightly since it hit the market, and more reports are coming out. It couldn't live up to it's pre-release hype, no matter how good it is. The pre-release reports were over the top, to say the least.

After JFK won the Presidential election a prominent journalist/critic/writer was attributed with saying " I am mystified. I only know one person that voted for Kennedy." I think much the same attitude applies to this post.
I suspect Nokta/Makro would love to have half of the sales in a year that any of the big 4 have in a month.
If the dollar weakens significantly in the near future , a more appropriate question may be whether they will be around to honor their 5 year warranty.
Kudos to a vibrant company and the competition they bring to the table but the thought that they are killing sales of other detectors is preposterous.

they have gone quiet in the UK ,no more chat on forums

The thing here in the southern US is that it basically came out at a horrible time for us. We don't have the season of spring anymore. It leaps right from 20 degrees and snow/ice to 80-90 degrees summer. Some of the fields here are already near the first cutting for hay and the woods are filling up fast with undergrowth, ticks, and snakes. And they love hanging out near those old home sites and such. So needless to say...at least in my part of the world, detecting is pretty much done til late fall.

If the Racer weren't a bargain, it would have a lot less buzz. The Turkish Lire is bery weak against the dollar lately and Makro is chosing to not adjust their prices for the US upward relative to their European pricing, thus the Racer is a bargain.

Metal detectors have always been overpriced. Part of this is due to the high cost distribution and sales model that they traditionally ised and part is a kind of "tax on treasure" where the price someone is willing to pay is supported by the hope of finding valuable stuff.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold

Would love to hear from some of the bigger dealers. People do read forums - not near as many join but a lot read them. So I do suspect it has an impact. Heck Kellyco tried to "Impact" the market because I suspect they were worried about lost sales.

Even though I believe the F75 update was good and some good features were added I suspect sales are down on its high end model. I been noticing more aggressive promotions on Minelabs- something is up. Like I said lots of high end used up for sale. Going cheap. So Two months ago it was the reverse stuff was selling high. I was watching pretty close for a while because I was looking.





shoveler Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> After JFK won the Presidential election a
> prominent journalist/critic/writer was attributed
> with saying " I am mystified. I only know one
> person that voted for Kennedy." I think much the
> same attitude applies to this post.
> I suspect Nokta/Makro would love to have half of
> the sales in a year that any of the big 4 have in
> a month.
> If the dollar weakens significantly in the near
> future , a more appropriate question may be
> whether they will be around to honor their 5 year
> warranty.
> Kudos to a vibrant company and the competition
> they bring to the table but the thought that they
> are killing sales of other detectors is
> preposterous.

Bryanna - Nebraska

Current - New to me but not new MXT Pro and T2 SE2 - Previous Minelab Sovereign GT, Minelab Safari, Whites DFX, Whites Eagle Spectrum
Smile its a good for you!

shoveler Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> After JFK won the Presidential election a
> prominent journalist/critic/writer was attributed
> with saying " I am mystified. I only know one
> person that voted for Kennedy." I think much the
> same attitude applies to this post.
> I suspect Nokta/Makro would love to have half of
> the sales in a year that any of the big 4 have in
> a month.
> If the dollar weakens significantly in the near
> future , a more appropriate question may be
> whether they will be around to honor their 5 year
> warranty.
> Kudos to a vibrant company and the competition
> they bring to the table but the thought that they
> are killing sales of other detectors is
> preposterous.


Noka/Makro has a 2 year (transferable) warranty.

We may have reached "peak detector" in the US. I bought and sold about 25 detectors in 2013 and 2014. I bought carefully and sold at prices a bit below what I thought was the prevailing market value. The stuff moved pretty quick, but I doubt I could do it now. I just saw a Gold Bug Pro offered and sold for $350. That's $50 - $100 below what I would have asked last year.

I follow a couple of Metal Detecting marketing guys on Facebook. As you can imagine, they travel a lot. All most all of it is imternational. That's where the growth is.

I think the future for high end detectors in the US is for "specialized" machines.

Here on this forum, we are all talking about relic machines. Relics come in all shapes, sizes and materials. Right now two quite different kinds of tools are in the spotlight. One group are the "bed of nails" machines, current "top of the charts" incliding the Makro/Nokta machines, F19, and Deus. For really bad ground with deep targets available, the PI machines like the GPX's are the tool,of choice.

For deep silver, Minelab has made the tools of choice for a long time, with machines like the V3i and F75 providing a challange.

The biggest unmet need in my opinion is for a means of zeroing in on rings. Gold rings, whether inland or at the beach, are the most valuable find that a hobby level detectorist is likely to make - yet no one has developed a machine which can really zero in on them. Because they are round and in the same conductive range as aluminum, it's tough to distinguish them reliably from nickles and pull tabs. Tom Slick did some interesting work with a V3i and a Bigfoot coil, based on how the highest frequency on the V3 shifted the aluminum response with the bigfoot to a range higher than most gold rings.

What if a machine could offer some means to identify rings by their combination of size and thickness plus perhaps some kind of "shift" like Tom has observed. If you could sell a machine that notched out nickles and most pull tabs, leaving rings and a greatly reduced spectrum of junk, you would sell carloads of them, especially if they had good depth in salt sand and at least wading grade water protection.

Rick Kempf
Gold Canyon AZ- where there is no gold



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2015 07:18PM by lytle78.

I have a Rancer coming. I believe in time when the Racer and Fores Core become used more , the sales will increase. To compare it to the Deis or Etrac at about 1/3 the price is saying a lot for the Racer.....Jack

jackintexas Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Most of the Racer talk is on this forum. My dealer
> who is a distributor for 3 brands never heard of
> the Racer until I pointed it out to him a couple
> of days ago.....Jack


I would agree but most of the talk about any detector is on this forum. I don't see as much talk about rushing out to buy one here as I see on other forums. There is more expertise on this forum as to how to learn to operate the higher end machines. When one is familiar with that they are not as likely to switch to a machine that may not out perform their current machine. Not saying there are not some people on the other forums that know their machines quite well,but they are more mixed in with the newbies and those that are not into the technical aspects of much as here.

I think that is where the Racer fits in as it is easier to use and most importantly people can feel they are not as likely to miss targets by having their detector set wrong. Price is also a big factor and a person can get more for their dollar by purchasing a Racer or a similar machine. Not saying they can't spend more and get a better machine. As with other aspects of the hobby some people do not have the patience and are not willing to take the time to learn how something works to make them more productive. Nothing wrong with that as it relates to detectors if the easier to learn machines can make them more productive.

I would not think its killing the sales but Ill bet its making a Swirl in the currents...Eddy current's that is...LOL!!

I feel the machine is awesome at one thing and good to very gopod at alot of others....and I look for Awesome for tool choices...

Keith

“I don't care that they stole my idea . . I care that they don't have any of their own”
-Nikola Tesla