My Magic 8 Ball says: Try Again Later. Damn. Frickin' Ball! Always pussin' out when I need a straight answer!
Seriously, IMO you *might* save $200-$300 by negotiating or get some extras thrown in free because the dealer wants your business. Someone buying a 1DX is a potential "big fish". Plus it looks good to sell one of those suckers. (Wonder what the profit margin is?)
Northstar, what feature(s) of the 1DX are you looking at that makes you want to replace your 5D3 or add to your inventory of fine cameras? I'm just curious because I gave that same question a lot of thought before I bought my 5D3. Because I use my cameras outdoors a lot, I look at everything I buy as the next broken item due to drop or whatever can happen. Even the 5D3 is a lot of money, more than I really should be spending as a non-pro. Have you rented one? Do you know or discussed it with someone who already has one? What has you excited about it?
What are the reasons/benefits to buy a 1DX? Well for sure durability, super badass speed and then the incremental differences about ergonomics, metering controls, etc. If you absolutely gotta get that shot of Michael Phelps diving in, 12fps would be nice insurance! However, if someone is paying out of pocket and unless the shots being taken are literally once in a lifetime, my ass is toast if I don't get them, why spend the money? (You can bet I would buy two 1DXs in a minute if my career/reputation was over without shots it could provide. But that rarely happens.) In most cases, I would rather have at most a 5D3 and then several nice L lenses.
Semi-unrelated thought about the definition of "Pros"
As for the comments about pros... I'm not a "pro" but I am a small business owner and I have known some pros over the years. All 'pro' means is someone charges money for their pictures. So I'll go out on a limb and say most pros in the camera ecosystem are small business owners. If you know pro photographers, most are not working with budgets handed down from accounting they have to use or lose. And they usually don't buy anything more than a box of paper clips without mapping out the purchase to fit within the accounting limits of the business. Esp if they have employees. Those pros that buy things on a whim are usually out of business and heavily in debt within a year or two after they've blown that small business loan seed money. Smart business owners are very conservative because it's a lot less stressful at bill paying time and frankly, they would rather eat and buy personal items than have big ticket business assets that might result in a cold house with hungry kids or wives.
Now with that said, there are myriad of other "pro" entities that are not small businesses, they are graphics production houses, ad agencies, publication companies with studios or photographer pools, etc, etc. IMO, those are the entities with large budgets that consider camera equipment as assets and a lot of money gets thrown around so things like a 1DX with 5 L lenses each (or 3, or 5, or 10 sets of them) isn't a camera or a lens, it's just a number on a balance sheet in another dept and a decision is made and the pro photographer (employee, not owner) comes in to work one day and there are 20 cases of goodies sitting in his office.
I assume that when many people on this forum say 'pro' with regard to buying, they automatically think of the latter scenario? (Or they think of the 1% of wealthy individuals that just like to buy expensive toys.) But when I think of 'pro', I think of the first scenario where if a $7000 purchase is made, it better be paid for within the year because baby needs a new pair of shoes!! I bet a lot of those pros buy 5D2 or 5D3 bodies and keep the rest of the money in the bank. As long as their clients love their work, it makes zero diff how the image happened, it just looks lovely. Here are your pictures and my invoice. Thank you!
