Grey market lenses

[mangurian]

1. Is there a way to tell a grey market Canon lens by looking at it ?
2. Do the Grey market lenses have the same part number and UPC ?

Many thanks,

[Tim]

Hello mangurian, 

It would be difficult to tell a gray market Canon lens by sight alone.  

The serial number will vary from lens to lens.  The UPC on the box would most likely be different, as it's; not destined for sale in the United States. 

[TCampbell]

New or used?  If new, there should be a Canon USA Warranty card in the box with a serial number pre-printed on the card which matches the lens serial number.

[mangurian]

new....thanks

[ebiggs1 · Accepted solution]

If there is a manual included it likely won't be in English. No Canon USA warranty.  Canon USA is extremely forgiving about gray market gear.  Way more than they should rightly be.  Again proof of Canon's excellent CS department.  Some camera companies will not repair one even if you pay for the service. Stores that sell gray market cameras/lenses are not authorized dealers for Canon. They buy from other suppliers at a discount. These suppliers are often overseas and import them into the U.S. Canon establishs a price point for their cameras/lenses that their dealers must adhere to, but the gray market vendors get around this and have no contractual relationship with Canon. The problem is that what they sell will not be the same in terms of support, warranty, accessories, manuals, software updates, etc. My advice, just don't do it.

[wq9nsc]

It used to be very common for some of the big camera shops to sell a lot of items with a choice of either a cheaper gray market choice without an official manufacturer's warranty or a more expensive properly imported version with a warranty for that market but this practice has dropped off quite a bit. But recently while looking at some Canon lenses I noticed even my favorite big New York camera store where I buy nearly all of my Canon stuff has a couple of gray market Canon lenses available.  

I remember shortly after I bought my 1DM2 Dell (yes, the computer folks) were advertising a bunch of Canon lenses deeply discounted around Christmas and one of my friends bought a Canon 85mm f1.8 from them and I think at that time it was priced at $100. Unlike the great B&H shipping and packing his gray market lens was in its original box thrown into a box big enough to hold a Dell desktop with a few pieces of paper wadded up as padding and lots of empty space so it got a nice bouncing trip from Texas to his house in IL.  The lens did survive that trip in working order and I think he still has it.

More years ago than I like to remember I did my PhD dissertation on gray markets, leakage between imperfectly sealed channels, and the economic and political power structure within distribution channels.  The most humorous part of the research was listing some then recent gray market fiascoes including the unexpectedly popular Cabbage Patch Kids dolls.  The official U.S. importer (Coleco at the beginning) greatly underestimated demand for the first Christmas they were available so alternative distribution brought a new supply in via the gray market but those probably led to some Christmas morning tears because the included adoption papers were in Chinese 🙂  The least humorous part for me was during my final defense after around 90 minutes of explaining the econometric modeling I had set up I was quite fatigued and in response to an easy question I accidentally called free-riding consumers re-fried consumers which was far more entertaining to the committee than me.

I personally wouldn't buy any expensive and especially not mechanically or technologically complex products without the proper warranty.  On one of my campus interview visit trips I realized I had left without my watch and bought a gray market Seiko watch from a Sears store near the Dallas airport, it was around $30 so not a big risk.  Thirty years and several batteries later that gray market Seiko is still happily keeping time.

Rodger