I am hoping that someone who owns or has owned both can ring in on which shot they liked better. Or maybe they are just different. I own an Mcal so I have that at least as a baseline.
I am also wondering where to get parts for a Peppina, I looked at O.E. and the La Peppina page was blank.

Both make great shots.
Less body but more subtle taste compared to for instance E61 shots.
In the cup I think Peppina is one of the machines that can compete with Mcal in terms of clarity but I have far more experience with the Mcal and I am not a cupper
In my option Peppina is less sensitive to grind and dose and I like the lever position on the side more.
Pull volume is slightly bigger on Peppina; with my Mcal I have sometimes trouble to get rid of air vacuum.
With Mcal you can make great microfoam.

But with Peppia also:
Making microfoam with a Frabosk frother is quite easy.
At the moment I am having Mcal in daily and use the Frabosk for microfoam in stead of Mcal's steam arm.

So in the end both are great. As much as I love my Mcal I think I would prefer the Peppina. But the one in the movie is from a coffee friend and no for sale

Look here: http://www.francescoceccarelli.eu/

Wow. I spent 800$ on my mcal and just found pepping for 100$ on craigslist, I am not sure if I want a lever project now. the ad says it works, is there any thing I should look for on a used one that would chase me away?

excessive rust on the kettle, excessive pitting on the kettle base, scoring of the cylinder wall, chewed up flathead screws securing the group bell.
Other than that, nothing major but you probably want to buy a seal kit from Francesco, which is very reasonably priced.


On the note of this topic, I was never lucky enough to have a go at an MCaL. I do know that I like the 'feature' of La Peppinas seals that allow me to just use the water I need. The minimum water volume is not related to the cylinder volume. You can spritz clean the showerscreen, use another few drops to just wet your towel for cleaning... I find myself using that all the time. Also because La Peppina is a bit messy as the pucks are never dry. Especially because I don't like to wait to pull out the pf until the lever has risen to the top. I just arrest the lever motion and pull out the pf, making for a bit of water on top of the puck.