compliance wrote:The secrecy on auctions is overboard and silly. There is no lack of eyes on ebay. Thinking that you will get away with a deal there by keeping it quiet is naive.

+1

compliance wrote:The secrecy on auctions is overboard and silly. There is no lack of eyes on ebay. Thinking that you will get away with a deal there by keeping it quiet is naive.

Actually the evidence I've seen by tracking auction prices contradicts your claim that "there is no lack of eyes on" eBay. If you track selling price of a coveted type of machine, you'll see that sellers who list their items with odd terms that make them just a bit harder to find usually get far less. Also it's just common sense, isn't it, that even one less bidder may keep the price from escalating as much. It's simple supply and demand. Since I like to collect, I've got saved searches for certain models to track the going price so I know when I'm ready to bid or if a deal just pops up locally, I'll budget enough but won't overpay. OTOH you do have a point that no one's going to reliably control the price by not mentioning something here that's posted online for all the world to bid on. All it takes is two bidders with deep pockets who really want it.

Psyd wrote:I guess what I'm trying to say is that if you recognise the seller from here, or CG, or Alt,coffee, etc, you may have a better feeling about it's condition.

Is there a specific forum on HB or CoffeeGeek that points to what people are seeing on live auctions or other places that may be selling equipment from reputable places like the ones you name in real time? That would be amazing! The reason I ask is because I am looking since I was taken for a ride by a professional equipment reseller who did not end up honoring the sales process or the product when my boiler went boom. Now I am looking for a good lever machine, good grinder, and am also always looking for any good piece of equipment like vacuum, chemex, aeropress (anything that coffee goes into I am interested in). It would be nice to visit one source with trusted suppliers/resellers. Right now I am going nuts checking a google search for Craigslist, have about 15 different eBay searches, and so forth. If I could afford to buy new then my espresso passion would be way easier, but when a boiler fails and I have a bucket of scrap metal on my counter it really kills the cause. Looking for a better way