What has been a slow, but growing, flood of wideband gear onto the used radio market, it's nothing compared to what is going to hit the market over the next 14 months and beyond.
The narrowband mandate deadline is the end of 2012. Many agencies have just now begun to acquire the necessary narrowband gear to replace their inventories so the pace of replacement is beginning to pick up. And the flood of used gear onto the market will quickly become a deluge and more in the months ahead.
Real world example: I help take care of radio gear for our local volunteer ambulance and our town and village highway/public works departments. Right now, I have 11 brand spanky new CM300 mobiles and two CP200XLS portables sitting on the floor waiting to be programmed and installed. Behind that in a couple of months will be another 15 CP200XLS's. We've already swapped out 20 M II, III, & IV pagers for the V's. And I have got one more GM300 mobile to replace.
Luckily, our fire department received all new mobiles, base station, and portables a couple of years ago. Our school district has NB compliant radios, too.)
I know for a fact that nearly every other community in our area is in the same situation to some degree. If this is the norm across the state and the nation, where there are dozens of each model of radio available on Ebay (and elsewhere) today, there will be hundreds in a few months. I don't even want to think about 2013.
And, there will be a lot more narrowband compliant stuff available too. Many agencies have used the narrowband mandate to move to digital or P25 or whatever, but already had large inventories of NB analog gear in service. As those systems get installed and become operational, all that will also come available.
If you are not sure about what I am saying, go over to Ebay, pick a specific model of radio, and set up a Saved Search for it. Then sit back and watch the counts go up and up and up over the months ahead. I've had a few of those going for nearly a year now.