Hello everyone. Newbie and long time lurker here. I'm looking for some advice on buying a used and/or defective machine.

I have been wanting to upgrade my coffee setup (if you can call a nespresso machine a coffee setup) for a while now. Due to part time studies my budget was very limited in past years, so I put it off. A month or so ago my old machine broke down and because my financial situation improved too, I started looking for good deals online.

Now I often see auctions/ads for machines that are already a few years old and sometimes defect (short circuit mostly). Oftentimes the owner doesn't really know much about the machine and there is little information provided. For example (current ones):


Rocket Cellini Premium Plus V1
Edizione Svizzera (couldn't figure out what that is, but it's on the badge)
Defective (Although the description says: "The machine is not defective, it needs a service, the brewing unit..." (or brewing head? Sorry I'm translating this from German) "... might need to be replaced. The machine now is reducing steam power.")
Service 2 years ago for about 340$
Age: 7 years of constant use
Price: ~500$


Vitudurum Classic V4
According to my "research" this is a relabeled Fiorenzato Bricoletta Volante.
Defective (short circuit when powering on, was apparently working fine before)
Age: 8.5 years
Price ~305$ (atm, 450 "Buy it now")


Now I know of course that it's impossible to say how much it would cost to get machines like these running again. But I'm just wondering. For those of you having experience with defective/old machines: Is this a complete gamble? Or are the chances quite high that they can be repaired at reasonable cost (let's say a few hundred bucks, not a thousand)?

Thanks so much!

As Red Green http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrbTta-VZ50 says, "If the women don't find you handsome, they should at least find you handy."

Most of the big expenses in restoring these machines are in pumps, heating elements, and services most people can't do at home (welding, sandblasting, powdercoating, etc.). If you're handy, I think most restorations will come in around the "several hundred" as opposed to the "thousand" mark.

I only have one experience with this, fairly positive. It seems to me that unless it is a highly sought after brand machines that currently aren't working should be fairly easy to find and easy to talk down in price. A few suggestions (mainly from what I've read here):

1. Make sure parts are readily available for the machine you are considering. Even find an online parts vendor you might use and look at the cost of its components to see what some additional repairs may cost (I used espressoparts.com and cafeparts.com).

2. Look up people's entries here who have rebuilt similar machines to see common troublesome issues. Do they seem easy to work on? Lots of help out there? There are certainly easier and harder machines.

3. What's the value of the machine if it's in perfect working order and how hard is it to sell then? For example I'd buy almost any Cremina for $500 since they are easy to sell on eBay for $1300 if they work, but a multiple group machine of unknown brands don't fetch much and tend to linger on the market. If it's a machine you love, seems to me it's worth taking more risk.

4. I'm glad I did a lot of tinkering on my Silvia to give me some basic knowledge and skills before moving on to a bigger machine. Start small.

That's what I can think of! Good luck!

I haven't done this with Espresso machines, but I've done it with other things. Basically it's a gamble: You can win big, and get something that actually works fine, but the seller didn't know how to use it, or maybe it's a common and easily fixed problem.

Neither of those scenarios are far fetched, but there is also the very real likelihood that the seller really isn't as dumb as they sound. Think about it: If you're trying to sell something that you know is junk, maybe you've tried to fix it or tried to get it fixed, and you know the repairs are more than it would cost to replace it. SO basically you know you've got a worthless piece of junk, that may have some small value to someone as a parts donor, but you still want to get some dough out of it. Why not sell it on ebay and play dumb? Just put it up there, and dangle the hope that there's really not much wrong with it along with the tagline: "I can't get it to work, but I dunno nuthing 'bout these spresser machines. It probably just needs cleaning or a fuse or somethin'..."

SO I'm not saying don't do it, but you asked what the worst case is. The worst case is that you gamble significant money and wind up with something that would cost more to repair than it's worth. If you're really knowledgeable about what you're buying, you may be well equipped to guess what is a good deal, and what is likely to be worthless. If you're not, your best bet is to study hard, and try to get as knowledgeable as you can, but DON'T overestimate your knowledge. When you're gambling, it's easy to confuse an appealing pot with a good bet. If you're not sure about a thing, your best bet is to bid low. How much are you willing to lose? or just walk away.

In general broken espresso machines only contain one major failure because usage stops at that point. Worst case would be something expensive on a machine that is already old and is nearing end of life for the rest of its parts.

In most cases these semipro machines have been used in a home without proper cleaning/descaling and no repair attempts are made. I purchased a machine with scale in the pump and was able to get it working with no additional parts. Unfortunately the wiring was quite old and started to go as well. I have gotten two years of daily use from the machine by soldering electrical connections around the boiler, but will probably have to do a more thorough rebuild eventually.

When you buy a machine try to be comfortable with every likely failure and how it would be repaired. Prosumer E61 machines are all very similar, I would not want to purchase a machine with any mechanical failures (such as leaking HX) but almost anything electrical or vibe-pump related I would consider easy.

If I had to make a blind guess, the Vitudurum probably needs a new heating element. The Rocket could have a broken pressurestat or a bunch of scale in the boiler. I'd be more comfortable starting with a machine that can heat up, but sellers often lie.

Absolutely bid low, there aren't many buyers for broken machines and you want to be ahead even if a bunch of things are wrong.

I suppose the worst case scenario would be a nonfunctioning pressure stat combined with a siezed over pressure valve. That could effectively blow up your kitchen. I do not agree with the above statement that it's likely that only one thing could be wrong with a used espresso machine. Machines sitting around for years with water in them can have lots of things wrong.

That said, if you do your homework and have a sixth sense about the people you might be buying from, you can really do well with a used machine. I bought a circa 2000 ECM Giotto last year for $400, and other than backflushing the group with a little Cafiza, replacing the group head gasket and insulating the boiler, I've had to do nothing else to it. It's been purring sweetly ever since.

for the most part look at it as more of a learning experience than a way to save tons of money.

I have bought two used machines. a 2 group ecm machine, that was in pretty rough shape. but it came cheap enough that I was able to get a new heating element, had the pump rebuilt. It worked well for a while, and eventually had to replace the pressure-stat. There is almost no resale market for these machines, so I pretty much broke even.

But I have a pretty good idea of how most of these machines work now, and feel better about jumping in to other projects.

Worst case scenario?
You learn a lot and it costs you more than you would have considered spending to learn that particular bit.

Maybe even worse?
You don't even learn a lot....

gavroche wrote: Edizione Svizzera (couldn't figure out what that is, but it's on the badge)

It's Italian for 'Swiss Edition.'