A simple call to almost any of the major phone dealers, including B&H would confirm that the lens is simply not in stock and nobody knows when it will be. Most salesmen will say that they haven’t seen one in months. One B&H salesman claimed that he haven’t seen one in 8 months.

It is just unusual that Nikon can’t supply a large reseller like B&H. This makes me feel more fortunate, since I got mine just seven weeks after it was announced, in December 2005. I also paid the lowest price at that time that I’ve seen posted for this lens: $669.95 plus shipping.

Apparently, the lens occasionally becomes available with some retailers and sells out in hours. With some stores, the only way to get it is with a D200 kit. Nikon figures out that if they can’t provide enough to saturate the marked and if there is plenty of demand for the few available copies, why not force us to get the D200 as well, or raise the price. This is one of the few photography-related products that are selling for 15-20% more than it did more than a year ago, when it was released.

Apparently, the record waiting time was 10 months, for a UK customer. The record purchase price was roughly $1200 on e-bay. It is speculated that the first batch was 30,000 units and sold out in 2 weeks. The second series numbers are probably now over 100,000. Obviously a lot of photographers like the concept of a lightweight do it all lens with VR at an affordable price, otherwise it would still not often be on back order and selling at a 20% premium on e-bay.