. I would say buy a cheap lens (I lost $0 on the 9-18mm) and if you like it go for the 8mm 1.8. 
I saw one on Roberts/UsedPhotoPro that was going for $500 but was absolutely beat to hell; the previous user used sharpie to make it black again; sold within 3 days.
If it worked fully, despite its cosmetics, that is a pretty good price. Isn't the normal price $1k for this lens? How do those places sell any at those markups? Just checked B&H and Adorama and both have it in stock for $1k usd.
Yeah it was a good price. I was really on the fence since it was so beat up with a scuffed lens hood. [strike] Just found one in very good cosmetics on a different forum classified for the same.
Seller recently offloaded a huge diving Oly kit; this must be one of the last bits that couldn't go.[/strike] And yes, the lens is both in stock with Oly/BH/Amazonat $1k usd and going for $900-980+ usd on eBay. Absurd!
At those prices, ya going retail new is the way to go. For me "used" means "used pricing" and should be closer to $700. I don't think you can look it up anymore, but Oly has fixed repair pricing and if you went to their repair portal you could look up exactly the price for repair for a particular lens of body was. In my mind the used price should be the retail price minus the repair price or lower just in case something went wrong with it soon after buying.
I guess this is a bit of a novelty lens with a limited user group. Maybe that means fewer people are reselling the lens (because you only buy this if you really need it at the price - if FE is just for fun you might go for the Samy or rokinon) and more people looking for a good deal (I guess some people would like the AF and speed for fun if they can find a reasonable deal) because it is a bit of a novelty - thus the used market suffers from low supply/high demand. Why some sell used at higher price that the listed price seems odd, but if they can get away with itAny ideas on why the Oly 8/1.8FE has such a small, high priced used market? Everything used on eBay is very near MSRP from Japan. Some are even more so?
It's not as if this lens is out of production.
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Gee, it seems as though the price went up a lot recently. I purchased a used one from B&H on 4/19/20 for $719 (condition: 9 - "Shows some signs of use; may exhibit minor scuffs or surface marks but overall looks very clean"). It seemed like a good price at the time, and now it looks like it really was. The condition is very nice, at least as good as described.
Ya that was the one feature that has made me consider this lens over the years.
Interesting news that Workspace has defishing. I have always used Anglerfish:
One thing to check, because I am not sure how it is now, but in the past Oly has this thing where their older software (what was it before Workspace, "Master"?) they would update it to add new features supported in new cameras so you could apply the same things to RAWs on the computer as you could in the camera, but ONLY if the raw came from a camera that supported that feature. So if you wanted to apply an art filter to raw files from an older model that didn't have art filter, the SW would not let you. So I wonder if the same thing is try for the 8mm de-fishing. If your camera does not support in camera de-fishing then are the raws locked out of this feature in Workspace?
That's a good question. It almost seems that it WOULD be limited to raws that came from a camera with the feature. Makes (stupid) sense! The software probably just does what the camera would do - i.e. no tweaking, unlike a regular defishing tool. Next time I've got my E-M10.2 and the FE out (which would be a first time), I'll try it.
