[time-nuts] 5370A on eBay

[Pete Lancashire]

Some dealers that sell T&M truly do not know what the stuff is. One
dealer I've bought
from can tell you everything you need to know abuut a 5 axis CNC mill
he has and since
that is his thing you can get a ROR or come visit and run it yourself. But
couldn't tell the difference between a 5370A and a 200CD other then
one has LEDs and
the other doesn't.

Not to say there are T&M dealer that are not to be trusted, one for
example will have say
a 3325A for $750 with a ROR and one for $100 Powers-Up. Guess which
one is missing
1/2 its guts ?

The third type of dealer is the one you may ask ... why the sellers
don't bother to run a simple test ?

There are dealers that sell for companies on commission, they make
their money moving
the stuff fast. An analogy is a new car dealer. The trade-ins go to
the auction house, even
though they have mechanics that could for a couple hundred double the
value of the car.
(BTW if your looking for a cool oldie these are the dealers to get to know)

I'm not saying this type of seller is smart or dumb but that is their
business model.

A modification of the third type is the company he is doing selling
for forbids him from doing
anything other then selling the items. You see this a lot where the
owner is an aerospace/defense company.

There the owner is the stupid one, but it was originally bought with
taxpayer money so who cares.

Oh well .. enough rant ... in short, it is very hard to tell what your getting.

-pete



On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 9:39 AM, Chris Albertson
<albertson.chris at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 9:25 AM, Bob Camp <lists at rtty.us> wrote:
>> Hi
>>
>> With reasonable credibility on the part of the seller (pictures and verbiage
>> both make sense, seller rating is good, he sells test gear not comic books,
>> etc) these have always been expensive. I've seen auctions close for anything
>> between $400 and $1500. $600 is not an uncommon number to see. I've always
>> found it cheaper to buy stuff like the current auction at $150 to $200 than
>> to go for the fancier versions.
>
> I've bought from both kinds of sellers.  If the guy sells mostly test
> equipment and says it works and offers to accept a reurn then it
> almost certainly will work.
>
> The ones to avoid are the sellers who sell test equipment but claim to
> "know nothing about this and can't test it".   This basically means he
> tested it and it determined it is broken.   I believe the "know
> nothing" claim if the seller is doing estate sales or runs a pawn shop
> but not if he sells test gear
>
> I don't know why the sellers don't bother to run a simple test.  They
> can get $100 more if they were able to say something simple like " I
> connected a signal generator set for 5MHz and saw very close to 5MHz
> on the counter."  The simple statement would earn him $100 easy.
>
> Chris Albertson
> Redondo Beach, California
>
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