To Ebay or Not to Ebay, that is the question…

We get the chance to evaluate a lot of gear that our clients purchase on Ebay. We find that the prices are usually pretty low, which is good. Unfortunately, you often get what you pay for. I have attended a number of video auctions and have found that you rarely find well maintained reliable gear at any auction.

We recently evaluated a Betacamcorder purchased on Ebay that seemed like a good deal. Physically the pictures showed a clean camera. Upon closer inspection we found the deck had never been properly serviced and needed all the normal maintenance parts such as pinch rollers, idler gears, tension components, and a video drum replacement. Being nine years old, many of the electrolytic capacitors were leaking, damaging printed circuit boards and causing video recording problems.

Audio recording was intermittent because of worn input select switches and pots. When camera was allowed to warm up to room temperature operating conditions, we found seventeen noticablely bad pixels at 0 db gain setting. The camera set-up was also generally poor.

This is a typical older camcorder that is suffering from poor maintenance which is likely the reason why it was being sold on Ebay. Most of our clients are professionals who require total reliability and quality video for their own clients. Gear in this condition would be totally unacceptable for such use. The cost to overhaul this unit and get it back into reliable shape would be in excess of six thousand dollars. You may ask why does it cost so much. When this camera was new it had a forty-five thousand list price with a street price of perhaps thirty-nine thousand. Parts costs are generally a percentage of original price.