Your best deals ever

[Psi]

I was thinking of making a post about the best deal i made in allanw's  "I do believe I got a good deal" thread
But decided i'd make a new thread instead. Don't want to hyjack his thread.

So here's a thread were we can all post our best deals ever


First up of course is allanw, see thread - https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=1709.0


My story is as follows

Best/most interesting deal i ever did was many many years ago, i found some old OKI plasma display modules (colordepth of 4 shades of orange) in a surplus shop for NZ$9.50 each (around US$6), i got a 2 to play around with and try to build an interface to a VGA port so i could use them in my carpc. (This was like 1994 or something around there)

Here's a pic of the back of one of these plasma displays


After i tracked down the datasheet from Oki I managed to get an interface working pretty well with a few 74hc chips and some analog electronics to get the Red VGA signal to a 2bit digital one.
A few years later while searching for the datasheet again i came across a forum post of someone wanting the exact display i had. These displays had been in brand new condition when i got them, still in their polystyrene packing and plastic protective film over the screen. I sent off a few emails to the guy and he said he still wanted them.  

Not really knowing what they were worth i just said i'd sell them for US$100 each. Seemed like a pretty good profit from $6. He then asked how many i had
So i went to surplus shop again, (this was a few years after i got the first two) they still had 6 of them left for US$6. Needless to say, bought them all and sold them all for US$100 each
I was pretty happy with that and bought a proper 7" vga lcd for my carpc with the profit.

However i felt a little guilty making so much profit (i was only 15 or so at the time, it seemed like a huge amount of profit to make).  Around 4 years ago from today (im 29 now, so 10 years later) i was googling and just thought i'd google the displays again, see if i could find out anything about what they were used for.
Guess what i found, i came across a webpage of the guy i sold them to, he has been reselling them.

Apparently they are part of a huge old printing press that is still used. The display parts are worth US$4.5k new from the printing press company 
Guy i sold them to has been reselling them for $1K to people with this printing machine.
So yeah, i could look back on it and wish i had charged more, but i dont, i made a really good profit from my costs and so is he

Guy i sold them too still has the webpage online, with pics of my old displays i think they may infact be the same pics i sent him, they look familar
here - http://www.jtgraphics.net/oki.htm

[PetrosA]

The best deal I ever made was on an espresso machine and grinder I had been getting lunch at a little Italian sandwich shop that had a two group Astoria (about $5k new) and a Mazzer grinder with doser (about $700-800 new). I asked the guy a few times if he wanted to sell them. Finally he did - for $150. I could easily get over $1000 for them, but it's not worth it to me. I've been using the grinder every day since and the machine is a good backup for my 1 group Astoria.

[EEVblog]

Audio Precision 2700 analyser.
Bought for $500, sold for $14K  
That's the best actual $ profit deal, but not the best markup % deal I've done.

Dave.

[sonicj]

$526

[sonicj]

cost me my modestly used Powerbook G4

[armandas]

Not sure about my best deal, I guess it would be this low-ohm meter, which I picked for £20 from ebay. Very unimpressive, seeing some other deals here, though 

[saturation]

Chinese cellphone charger and battery off eBay, $1 each included shipping and handling from PRC.
I then open them to see what needs improvement, rarely does, and life is good.

Batteries I test charge outdoors and see what happens.  Otherwise I might have fireworks instead.

[tinhead]

my best deal ever ?

As few years ago one of my customers said "I can't pay you invoice, tomorrow i will have to sign bankrupcy act so go to Lab and take what you wish".

the second best was "to find" my current wife ^^

[EddieB]

Can't really say I've ever had any amazing deals..

the second best was "to find" my current wife ^^

Referring to them as your 'current' wife normal results in a slap :p

[Neilm]

Best deal I ever did was on an A0 inkjet plotter. When I sold it I said to the guy (a brother of a collegue at work) make a reasonable offer for this, including a spare print head, ink and 6 rolls of paper. He gave me £150 for the lot.

I bought the printer from a company closing down - total outlay £20.

Neil

[cybergibbons]

Some of my best finds have been from skips for totally free:

• 120 of 486DX2 66Mhz machines - they were old, but I ripped out the processors, overclocked my desktop to 100Mhz and replaced the burned out processor every week or so...
• An x-ray machine - it was a "live" machine that projected onto a screen, played with it for a bit and then split it for parts
• Several thousand unused crystals (can't remember frequency) - split into bags of 10 and sold on ebay
• Two robotic arms with miniature simulator controls - sold for a lot
• A gas chromatograph - split into parts and sold for spares.
• A PABX - got a 48V 50A switchmode power supply out of this, sold

There's probably more...

[TheDirty]

cost me my modestly used Powerbook G4

Is the VIN scratched out?

Somebody must have really wanted a Powerbook G4.

[tinhead]

the second best was "to find" my current wife ^^

Referring to them as your 'current' wife normal results in a slap :p

except things like "so you bought a piece of crap ^cables and lamps^ instead of new kitchen?" she's perfect, 15y younger, perfect body, very high IQ. On the other side a wife is always high cost factor so that's why second place.

[baljemmett]

Some of my best finds have been from skips for totally free:

My plotter is one I rescued when it was on the way to the skip, having become unreliable and no longer required for teaching the curriculum (I was helping to look after my school's network at the time).  Popped the back off and there was a broken trace to the power socket; easy enough to fix, and now I have fun watching it plot schematics.  It's the simple things that amuse...

[I've seen a method of plotting artwork on PCBs using a gutted plotter pen body and an steel-tipped etch-resist pen.  That might be worth trying sometime!]

[Psi]

Another good deal i got was this power supply for NZ$30 (worth NZ$265 new)

http://www.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=MP3118&keywords=13.8&form=KEYWORD
Adjustable from 10v-15v @ 18A


And one of these industrial lambda power supplys for $99

with 4 isolated modules installed
1) 2-6V @ 25A
2) 5-15V @ 12A
3) 5-15V @ 12A
4) Split dual output 5-15V x2 @ 6A combined

Extremely useful, since it's isolated i can connect them in series to get pretty much any voltage i want from 2-66V @ at least 6A.  Or a lot more amps at lower voltages.


Also got a 40mW argon-ion laser with MASSIVE 1kW toroid transformer for $20.
Only bought it for the toroid as the unit was all messy with wires everywhere and the laser head looked like it had been man handled a lot so i assumed it was broken.  After untangling the wiring and checking the tube it looked intact. Fired it up and, as expected, no laser output, tube glowed nice and pretty tho. I happened to bump one of the mirror alignment screws and it lased for a sec! After some tweaking of the screws i got it working great

So now that the laser is working i can't bring myself to cannibalise it for the nice toroid. Hehe

[NiHaoMike]

Just 2 days ago, I bought a 19V,6.5A wall wart for $10 at a garage sale. It was for an old "cube PC" that has broke down.
I also got an iSee portable video recorder for $15 off Amazon. I then modified it to use any USB Flash drive.

Of course, free stuff is nice, too. A friend of mine gave me a Fluke Nettool. It often misbehaves with modern auto sensing ports (probably why my friend gave it to me!) but I believe it was worth over $1000 new...

[sonicj]

cost me my modestly used Powerbook G4

Is the VIN scratched out?

Somebody must have really wanted a Powerbook G4.

nope, its legit. my former roommate was the impulsive type...

ohh yea, i gave him my xbox 360 too... (i never played the thing) still a pretty sweet deal!

i bought the golf cart from him for $500 because it "wouldn't run." bypassed the relay in the charger and it ran great after i put some juice into the batts 

[JohnS_AZ]

Maybe not the best ever, but one I use a whole heck of a lot. This thermometer does K, J, T, R and E thermocouples, Pt100 and Pt3850 resistive sensors, and non-contact IR and has a laser aiming pointer. It also has an RS-232 port. I picked it up in the odds'n'ends section of a furniture auction. I bid $5.00, and no one else bid on it.

[JohnS_AZ]

This one is pretty cool as well. Its a WaveTek 3SR "Stealth" sweep transmitter/receiver. It's made for working on cable TV systems, but it functions great as a portable 5MHz - 1GHz spectrum analyzer. It's worth about $1,000, and I paid $12.99 for it at a Salvation Army thrift store. There was no charger with it and the batteries were dead. They figured it was broke. :-)

Since I don't do much RF any more, I've been debating tossing this onto eBay to fund a new DSO.

[sonicj]

motu 828 mkii for $60 from pawn shop. retail $750

tivoli model one for $8 NIB at goodwill retail $150

[quantumfall]

Show my age now. Dealer closing down sale.  An ACT Apricot PC twin floppy 3.5 sony drives, 512K ram upgrade (64K x 1 bit chips in 8 banks on a card) total 640K, plus a Brother daisy wheel printer, 50 used floppy disks (Expensive in those days) and a 12" green mono monitor for £450.  I sold it a year later for about £650 I think not sure now but it was a great deal at the time.  The first and only PC I sold for more than I paid for it, I've had a few as well   I could have bought several others at the time, it was a last day sale at a PC dealers but did not have anymore cash.

[tuo]

In 2006 I puchased flight tickets to Japan, Nagoya. It was a new straight route from Helsinki to Nagoya and there was an opening offer: both ways 399€. What does it have to do with electronics? I bought my Sanwa DMM and a small LCR meter on that trip from those nice little shops under Akihabara railwaystation in Tokyo. It is just a lovely place with little electronics shops or more like booths. One sells capacitors, the next one DMM:s and stuff, next one LED:s etc.

[gib0r]

Back in July my place of work surplussed a bunch of stuff from our old building, which included a then larger metrology lab...

Day of sale, $40 bought me the following:

Tektronix 2445A
BK precision 1760 PSU
HP 8020 rackmount psu
2x Keithly 2750 rackmount dataloggers/Multimeters with complete software package and Kelven probes.
Fluke 8804A Multimeter
Fluke 8020B Multimeter
HP 3466A Multimeter
Keithly 480 Picoameter
Hart Scientific 1502 Thermometer with probe
Huntron HSR410 switcher
Mitutoyo sheet metal micrometer.
other odd misc items such as hygrometer probes,calibration tools, and some clean room items.


Even with the obscene price, the best part of all of it was being able to overhaul my fathers workbench with extras and what some of the above replaced on mine.  My father has been using the same test equipment since I was a child, and boy was he excited!

[Mechatrommer]

Since I don't do much RF any more, I've been debating tossing this onto eBay to fund a new DSO.

if you are considering selling it at your bought price, i might considering buying it from you
gib0r, you dont have to repeat that, a link to your post in another forum is much preferable, or stated in different tone, but thats just me. enjoy the deal!

[gib0r]

Since I don't do much RF any more, I've been debating tossing this onto eBay to fund a new DSO.

gib0r, you dont have to repeat that, a link to your post in another forum is much preferable, or stated in different tone, but thats just me. enjoy the deal!

Eh, post was removed from previous location. Meant to post it here anyways. No reason to rewrite it.