When It Rains.....It Pours!

I know that people tend to use this little phrase in a negative sense, but this is a case where the opposite is true. A few posts ago (In "Milk Run") I wrote about picking up an underpriced 2010 MacBook with the funds that I had accumulated from doing some misc. computer work. Of course I'm not in the process of a switch to Mac, but I'm more than happy to take advantage of the Mac-Lovers out there, by making money off of them! In this case, I ended up selling the cleaned-up (in a physical as well as computer sense of the word) for $500! Yup, I doubled my money (more or less) in 2 weeks. 

  At this point, things started coming together. First I came across a D50 that the seller seemed to think that there was something wrong with: he stated that it would occasionally "not focus" giving an R07 error. After a little bit of research, I found that this wasn't an error, but the camera telling the user that it's in the process writing the images from the buffer to the memory card and there are 7 images left to write! While this is happening, the camera won't do anything else, including trying to focus. I got it for $91 (shipping included), so the "back-up/hazardous duty" camera has been acquired. Pretty closely thereafter came the Tablet.....

 Several months ago, I got involved in examining the market for tablets at the prompting of a friend, of course, I had come across the ThinkPad offering at that time, but dismissed it because it was in the "nose-bleed" $650+ area that's clearly aimed at the business end of the market. However, it was essentially a ThinkPad version of what a tablet should be, with excellent IPS/Gorilla Glass hi-res screens (1280 x 800) and built-in Pen input capability. What one reviewer said sums it up suscintly: "What your IT department would design a tablet to be". A few days ago, there appeared on eBay the high-end (64Gb) version "As Is" for $200 with a "make offer" option. After a little back and forth with the seller, it was found that the tablet won't power on, but.......still under warrantee TILL NOVEMBER! Holy Cats! I offered him $150, which he took, so I'm chomping at the bit waiting for this thing to show up so I can send it in to Lenovo for repairs. 

Which leads in to a rarely discussed grey area. That of buying products known to be "not working", but still under warrantee. This can be a tremendous technique for saving and/or getting an otherwise overly expensive product. But it's not without problems. First of all, there is every possibility that you'll find that the item has been broken due to some user error that voids the warranty. Secondly, it often requires a LOT of research to ascertain whether it's even eligible for repairs under warranty anyway. In this case, I was able to find this out because I'm very familiar with ThinkPad support (which the seller was not). Then comes the really tricky part. In the process of messaging back and forth, you have to figure out whether the seller is being honest about his selling the product. Whether this was really something he just broke or in this case, part of a "mixed lot" of corporate "cast-offs" that he picked up. A quick look at his "other items" for sale indicated that it was the later reason. So, I decided that I'm willing to bear the risk of getting it repair under warranty (or not) for $150 which is what I offered and he accepted. Typically, these are not IT guys and want to just sell off as quickly as possible so they can do it all over again. 

 The last thing was the "Plastic Fantastic", or 28-80mm f3.3-5.6 "G" lens which I had previously written about as the perfect pairing with the light and compact D50. Virtually all the professional reviews I've seen of it rave about it's performance being all out of proportion with it's weight, size and cost. I had found that it can often be found under $50, but last night, I scored one for under $30, after shipping! This was probably because of the auction ending at the awkward time of just after midnight central time, regarless......I'm happy!

The upshot is that, all-in-all, for about $280, I was able to score three of the items on my "wanted" lists by spending just a little bit more than the profit I made from "flipping" the MacBook. Yup, this there is going to require more writing after I use them for a while, but I'm sure looking forward to that!