Where to Buy and What the Numbers Actually Look Like
The Sony A6700 launched at $1,399.99 body only in North America, and that's still the baseline most retailers are tracking off. If you're looking at a kit with the 16-55mm f/2.8 G lens, expect roughly $1,800 to $1,900 depending on who's running a promotion. I've seen deals dip as low as $1,299 on the body during Black Friday sales at B&H and Adorama, but those are the exceptions, not the rule. Amazon sometimes bundles a card or case but rarely beats the standalone price. Keep an eye on used pricing too — the A6700 held its value surprisingly well because it replaced the A6600 and there wasn't a huge generational jump that made older models instantly obsolete. Here's the thing most people miss when they're shopping around: the bundled kit lens matters way more than the camera body discount. Sony's 16-55mm f/2.8 G kit lens alone retails for about $800 new. If you see a "deal" that includes this lens and it's only $200 off the kit price, you're not getting a great deal. A real deal gets you $300 or more off the combined body-and-lens price. I learned that the hard way when I picked up a refurbished A6700 from a third-party seller for what looked like a solid $1,100. The lens was a fake mount adapter masquerading as a genuine Sony. Took me two weeks and a visit to an authorized dealer to confirm it. That's why buying from authorized dealers matters more than chasing the lowest number. Used market prices typically run between $1,000 and $1,200 for bodies in good condition with fewer than 20,000 actuations. Shutter count is the first thing you should check before buying used. Sony's menu doesn't show this by default, but you can take a JPEG photo and run it through free tools like SonyImgsnap or PhotoDC to extract the shutter count from the EXIF data. If a seller won't provide a recent shutter count screenshot, walk away. I've seen too many listings where the seller says "barely used" but the number comes in at 80,000+
