That's bad, but it's actually worse than that! Next year, your $700 gun will still be worth close to $700. Five years from now it will still probably be worth $700 because the new ones will cost $900. However next year your $700 bow will be worth $350 and in 5 years you will be happy to get $100 out of it. It's a double-edged sword. The cost is high, but the depreciation is the killer.

I trade every year, but for last years model. It cost me about $250 to trade both my hunting and target rigs from '02's to '03's this spring. The guys that sold them took a combined depreciation beating of about $600 on these '03's, where I lost about $90 to depreciation on the '02's.