Or could it be that the "second batch" WAS Bitmain's "internal mining use" machines and they decided to dump them out while there was still a market for them?
Nah....
They dropped the price BECAUSE profitability died - VERY OLD pricing tactic on the part of Bitmain.
Makes me scared to buy an ASIC unless I can get one in the very first batch like VoskCoin did.
Unless it's an algorithm with a LONG ESTABLISHED ASIC presence like SHA256 (Bitcoin and such) or Scrypt (Litecoin among others), it IS a huge risk past the first batch of the first ASIC miner for an algorithm.
It helps a lot and reduces the risk factor quite a bit to have very low electric cost - then you can still make SOME money when other folks are losing it.