I also doubt that the price of D300 sucessor will be below the current price, not in this financial times; however, for sure there will be some sellers who will get rid of their old cameras so the price on ebay should decrease a little bit.

As was pointed out you have to take into consideration the MSRP (MAP) and what the street price is at any given time. In reality while the D300 street price is in the $1600 range the MAP is still at $1799......exactly what it was when it was delivered in Nov 2007. Nikon USA has not had an official price move on either the D3 or the D300 since their introductions but we've seen considerable movement in the street prices on both cameras.

You'll also have to take into consideration the potential inventory levels of the original D300 if and when we see a D300s. If Nikon feels there is significant inventory out there we could see a couple of possible scenarios. The new camera could be priced slightly higher or the D300 might likely have an instant rebate put back into place.

IMO, there's virtually no way the replacement camera comes in for less than what you can get a D300 for today.

Steve

Because of the continual dollar decline against the Yen (although the dollar has been rising the last few days), I would not expect the price to go down. Nikon will use newer equipment to give them the price increases they feel they need (although they don't seem shy about raising prices on older lenses either.) The D70s retailed for $100 less than the original price of the D70, but the dollar/yen was more stable back then. The D80 retailed for $100 more than the original price of the D70s. The D300 retailed for $100 more than the original price of the D200. The D2Hs retailed for $300 more than the original price of the D2H. The D2Xs retailed for $300 less than the original price of the D2X. The D90 retailed for the same price is the original price of the D80. The D5000 retails for $150 less than the D60, but I don't know whether you can consider that a direct replacement.

Assuming the D300s is real and has substantial feature increases over the D300, I would expect it to retail between $1800 and $1995. If it's a minor upgrade, I would expect it to come in at $1700. The original price of the D300 was $1800 and the current street price of the D300 in the U.S. is about $1570.

After a while the price of a new camera will go down a bit.

When an updated version of the same camera is released, does the price generally go back up to what it was originally when it was first released, a price better representing the new features whether it's above or below the original price, or something completely different?

If the price of the D300 will go back up once it's refreshed I think I'll just get the current one. If it's likely to be a fairly similar price to the current price of the current model, perhaps I should wait.

Anybody been keeping track of this sort of thing over the years?