For those of us who live outside Europe and the USA, we are generally faced with the exchange rate ruling at time of buying. This can HUGELY affect the amount we pay for our collectibles. At present, as an example, the NZ$ buys 59cUS and dropping, whereas before this financial mess occured it was sitting around 79cUS. On a purchase of only a $100 or 2 it makes a considerable difference to the buying price for us,so...............it is less likely that I for one will be buying much from those currency areas until things improve considerably!
As far as buying for investment is concerned, I think it would be fair to say that we all do this to some extent, and buy at a price we feel we can reasonably get back if we needed (or chose) to resell.
I do also notice that the Swap Forum is not getting (in my opinion) as many "buys" as it has up until recently.
