I heartily agree with the above statements...
The Laws of Supply and Demand will always come into play...and since I believe that most of our "specialist" gear has fairly inelastic demand curves you will likely see behavior described as above...few unexpected buyers and steep discounts to create additional demand
I would counsel patience for sellers (because I am not in the market for anything at the moment...if I was then I would be urging "panic" to encourage a better price
)
Cheers!