New love for old flaws

One afternoon, at a vintage digital-camera shop in Guiyang, Guizhou province, several young shoppers crowded around the counter, passing a row of old CCD cameras between them. They photographed one another, then compared the results for skin tones, colors and grain. They were modeling a movement for which cameras are only the most photogenic edge. Across China, the recently obsolete — old cameras, vinyl records, even entire streets — are being turned into a business.

Li Shilan, a 19-year-old shop assistant, knows the differences between the cameras by heart. "Panasonic has a slightly cool, creamy tone," she said. "It makes skin look clear and natural, almost like a soft-focus filter. Kodak colors are more vivid."

Most of the cameras on the counter have been out of production for years. CCD, short for charge-coupled device, was once the dominant sensor technology in consumer digital cameras, but around 2010 CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) gradually took over the market, and CCD disappeared from mainstream shelves. Now, the old cameras are back in demand, with prices rising with them.

The appeal has little to do with technology. What is available on CCD cameras no longer works quite so well. Instead, young buyers are drawn to the blur, digital noise, color shifts and uneven exposure that smartphone cameras have spent years learning to remove.

Guo Nanhua, born in 1999, runs the Guiyang shop, Camera Happy House. His customers are mostly high school and college students, along with young workers in their first few years out of school. For many, a CCD camera is a relic of a bygone era. They were born when the technology was already nearing the end of its consumer life, and are now buying back an aesthetic from a period they wouldn't recognize.

On Xiaohongshu, a Chinese lifestyle platform, posts tagged "CCD" have drawn close to 7 billion views. Some users take the cameras on trips, others use them for makeup photos, and many want images that don't look like they came from a phone.

A similar generation gap is showing up in record stores. Zheng An, 23, runs a shop in Guiyang so small that only four or five people can stand inside at once, its shelves packed with vinyl records and first-pressing CDs. "I have the best selection in the city," he said.

Zheng opened the store after college out of a love of music. His customers range from middle school students to people in their 50s, 60s and 70s. On busy days, sales can reach 5,000 to 6,000 yuan (about $750 to $900). A middle school student once came in looking for a record by Cui Jian, a pioneer of Chinese rock. College students have searched for The Beatles. "That really surprised me," Zheng said.

For these consumers, Cui Jian, The Beatles, film photography and CCD cameras are not necessarily reminders of their childhood years. They belong to their parents' generation, or even earlier. Yet, instead of disappearing into time, their music and tech can now be bought, used and posted all over again.

A market in memory

As demand for vintage items has grown, nostalgia has become a niche market.

For Guo, the clearest sign is the price. Around 2020, CCD cameras sold for just 100 to 200 yuan. Some were treated as little more than electronic waste. Today, ordinary models can fetch 500 to 600 yuan, Guo said, while cameras with distinctive image quality boosted by influencer recommendations or celebrity use can sell for more than 1,000 yuan. Because the cameras are no longer produced, value depends on the brand, model, condition and the look of the images they produce. On a good day, Guo can sell more than 20 cameras.

For first-time buyers, the question is often no longer whether to buy a CCD camera, but which one — a line of logic that has turned test shooting into part of the shopping ritual. Customers pick up several cameras, photograph the same scene and compare the results side by side on an iPad. Some leave empty-handed, only to return weeks later to spend hundreds or even thousands of yuan.

The record business depends even more on scarcity. Zheng searches for stock across China and abroad, including in Japan. Some records surface on Chinese secondhand platforms only a few times, sending prices skyrocketing. His shelves run from records costing a few dozen yuan to rare editions with much higher price tags. He keeps a signed Teresa Teng record in a safe. It is rare enough that he doesn't want to sell it.

Consultancy iiMedia Research estimates that China's retro economy reached 355.25 billion yuan in 2025, up 11.7 percent from a year earlier, and projects the market will approach 588 billion yuan by 2030.

A CCD camera once worth a few hundred yuan can now command more than 1,000. A rare record can cost several times that amount. A whole street can be rebuilt around a look and feel from decades ago. The past is being repriced.