This is an interesting topic and I looked at some of the forums which have dealt with this issue. In the USA apparently, the actual legalities of the "not for resale" is in a contract between the original user and the supplier. If you are purchasing something which is labeled in this way, and it is also noted as a "used" item there may be no issue for you except that it may be an issue as I mentioned above in obtaining any repairs.

Certain courts which have concluded this is an illegal contract if one agrees to purchase something labeled "not for resale" but most court districts have not found in this way. Again, if it is sold at an extremely low price....this may raise other flags. Either stolen or having a malfunction which would not be repairable. Also, if the seller did not state on the offering the item was labeled "not for resale" another issue of potential fraud is raised.

So, there you have it....another interesting saga in the blah, blah, blah......

TaoTeJared said:
That's not true. Once a product has served it's purpose it is usually sold as "the demo" item for a severe discount. I have had friends who worked at BestBuy who bought that stuff all the time.

Sorry to correct, but that's wrong :-) You can of course sell demo products, but you can't sell things that have "Not for resale" on them, because the manufacturer gives those away for free. It's like that for anything, be it cologne, hardware, software. Things that have a manufacturer-applied "Not for sale" mark on them are always... well? Exactly. Demo units that have a sticker "demo unit" on them, that's a different story.

I'd be surprised if it was different in the US than it is in the rest of the world.

If the camera was stolen, it does not belong to you. If, however, it was sold "as is" by a legitimate agent, no problems. This will become a reality for you if you ever need service as Nikon parts are very limited in availability to non Nikon service centers and Nikon may have a problem repairing a camera they have labeled as NFS.

If you paid a less than USD $650 for a camera body with only 500 clicks on it....I would suspect this was obtained unlawfully.

Tough decision....

Yes sounds to me like the store demo that everyone gets to hammer away on. Like at stores such as Best Buy or Costco. They get left without lens caps or a lens mounted, left on all day, and generally banged around pretty good. At lot of these demos get refurbished by Nikon and put back on sale on ebay, craigslist etc. I almost bought my Leica M9 as refurbished unit because of the price difference and full warrenty.

chris_weinert said:
Anything that has an "NFR" (not for resale) note on it and is then sold is done so illegally, there's no exception.

That's not true. Once a product has served it's purpose it is usually sold as "the demo" item for a severe discount. I have had friends who worked at BestBuy who bought that stuff all the time.

Like spraynpray said, you may have an issue if you send it in for service if it was stolen.

At this point I would just use it, pray it doesn't break and don't send inquires out about it to Nikon.

I think you are on a time-bomb because at some stage you will probably need some service and what then? Does Craig's List have buyer protection like eBay and Paypal?

Anything that has an "NFR" (not for resale) note on it and is then sold is done so illegally, there's no exception. NFR items are given out by the manufacturers for the purpose of demoing the product, having it demoed by someone, or as a free complimentary copy. In any case, the terms prohibit giving the thing to someone else for money, as it is pretty obvious from the words "not for resale" (or in your case "not for sale").

You can bring the guy who sold you the thing in quite some trouble, even if it's not stolen.

Nikon would be very interested in hearing from you, I guess. Then again, I'm not sure what will happen to you, you will probably lose the camera and get your money replaced, but then you'd be without the camera...

Around 500

Maybe you ought to have this conversation with Nikon USA. How many clicks has it got on it?

sounds like a BestBuy store model - probably stolen or sold to an employee.

it is kinda fishy...but it works fine

Sounds likely a sample copy that would be sent out to reviewers by Nikon, not a store display model. Sounds kind of fishy.

under that it says 1059-mpt

Probably a store display model or possibly one of the lot from the stolen nikon van last year. any other peculiar marks?

bought a D7000 on craigslist and on the bottom where the serial number should be it says sample not for sale