The point is selling hardware secondhand for more than it is likely actually worth in order to recoup your investment is a bad thing - which is to say, "making about 1/2 or so back on your money and you sell them used for just about the price you paid for them new" (if not more).
Unless something atypical like flat diff is happening (which can't be counted on enough to "rinse and repeat") and the viability of the machine is actually retained during that time, selling it for near new price after several months means ripping someone off. You get your "ROI" by effectively stealing it from someone else. That's exactly what's happening with Bitmain selling used S5 for the same or more than they sold them new several months ago. If the diff had gone up more than about 10% in the last six months (like the 50-100% that would have been expected had the trends of the previous two years kept steady), nobody in their right mind would be buying S5 for the same money they paid at Christmas.
I feel the argument should be well-qualified enough to require no further defense, and as it's pretty off-topic at this point, I'll say nothing further on the subject. How 'bout them BM1385 chips, eh?
That's an oversimplified argument. The price is mostly based on the EXPECTATION of revenue, which could be influenced by a lot of factors, such as buyer's power costs vs seller's power costs etc. If the buyer can extract more use out of that hardware than alienesb - more power to him/her, pun intended.
Them chips are great with salsa.
Seriously though, I'd be more interested in the specs of an actual S7. This pre-announcement sounds like an attempt to preempt something and is quite useless for an end user like myself.
Yes, the power cost can be a great influence. Sometimes a zero worth of junk miner for you, is something that can generate very good cash flow , and is money printing machines. So selling the used miners at the right timing and to the right buyer is a kind of art.