Second hand kit.... what's your biggest bargain?

[c3po]

Having seen another post on here with a member getting a WO Megrez 80 for just £80 second hand, it prompted me to think about my biggest bargains... and actually, i think my biggest yet was just last night - a Sony A200 DSLR with a 28-70mm and 70-210mm lenses for the princely sum of gratis, nil, nothing, free, all thanks to a wonderful recycling group called Freegle - basically you post wanted & offered ads for items that you no longer want or those that you need, but the main rule is they must be free of charge to others. The camera i got, inceidentally, works 100% and has probably just made my road to the AP dark side much easier!

So, what's you biggest bargain?!

C3PO

note to the mods: please accept my apologies if this is against forum TOCs regarding selling/trading goods and feel free to delete and/or move if needed.

[The Sailor]

The wife .

Jim

[John]

I picked up a Skywatcher 250PX dobsonian in great condition for £100 from E.Bay while back. I had to spend about £20 on petrol to pick it up but still a great bargain. I've also had a couple of 6" F/8 refractors for under £150 apiece over the years. I've only bought one scope new and lost around £250 when I sold it 6 months later

Needless to say, I'm a great fan of buying used !

[JohnC]

Intes micro 715 £500 bargain.

[RikM]

Starlight Xpress SXV-H9 mono camera, SXV guide camera, ST80 guide scope + NexStar SLT GoTo mount - £100 and a 90min car journey

[SamAndrew]

I was happy to resell my Tal-1 at a £50 profit

[kevrees]

Now i got some money to buy a scope, all the 'bargains' seem to have gone into hibernation (as well as clear skies) so im going to settle for a heritage 130. If it turns out to be as good as i have read then it should turn out not so much a bargain but certainly good value for money

[onesmallstep]

At Kelling Heath a few years back I picked up 10x70 Vixen bins for the princely sum of £40. Unfortunately I have a sight defect so they caused eyestrain (the bins were perfect, it was my vision that's the problem) so I sold them the following year for the same price so broke even.

[Peter Drew]

I purchased a 5" F15 APO trplet object glass by Ross for £15 through Exchange & Mart (remember that publication?)

[John]

I purchased a 5" F15 APO trplet object glass by Ross for £15 through Exchange & Mart (remember that publication?)

Those were the days !

When I first started in the hobby the small section in the E&M on scientific equipment was about the only place you could find real astro equipment advertised for sale. The alternative was "department store / mums catalogue" type scopes

[Nevy]

I bought a 21mm ethos , brand new in the box , never used for £420. :-),

And a 16" lightbridge from eBay for £1000 with a teliegizmo 365 cover , JMI scope buggy and two sets of clip on JMI weights.

Sent from my AWSOME iPhone using Tapatalk

[rory]

not as much a bargain as johns 250px dob for £100, but i bagged a 200p dob with a upgraded raci finder (antares) for £100. probably cost me £30 in juice to collect mind you.

i bought it the day after my beloved dog died, so the scope is named after him ( murphy) the scopes black and white like he was

[LukeSkywatcher]

I bought a 25mm Vixen NLV from a fellow SGL member. Pristine condition and i saved about 50% of the retail cost.

[sologuitarist61]

Photography-wise I got an old camera at an auction for £1 (an old German model I had never heard of), decided to sell some stuff at a car boot sale the following day and stuck it on the table hoping for interest and a foreign holiday maker saw it and got excited and said 'how much do you want for it', so for a laugh I said 'give me £50' and he did!! Never did find out what it wa, and wished I had said £100. Not the sort of an amount to change your life, but I will always remember that

[c3po]

Wow, looks like the days of picking up a bargain are still far from gone. It seems there's quite a few of us still picking out a nugget of gold from the spoil heap every now and then, keep 'em coming guys 'n' girls!

[LeeB]

A few bargains over the last 12months , carton f15 80mm for £57, a 8.5inch David Hinds F7.5 with good japanese orthos and helical focusers £40(charity donation) , a tal1 £42 with extras. A couple of really big camera cases free.

So its been a good year so far.

[Daniel-K]

HEQ5PRO with a 8inch SW reflector £250

[nightfisher]

I never seem to find these bargains, though im pleased with my skymax 102 complete with heavy duty solar film for £100 posted, im sure it was some one on here that made it a while back

[Andrew*]

I got an Orion ED80 for £100, which I consider to be my best bargain.

Also, I took a chance at some unknown pre WW2 Zeiss 32mm "Turrita" binoculars on AB&S a few years back. At £15, you can't go far wrong, I thought. Last year I put them on eBay and bids went over £80, and won by a chap in Russia!

Andrew

[cathalferris]

I've been somewhat lucky over the years with paying attention to the small ads, and deciding carefully what I am looking for and what I need. Not that often I'll buy randomly.

I picked up a pair of 15x70 TS binoculars for free but they had been dropped a few times and were not in great nick. I managed to realign them sufficiently for my purposes anyway. If I meet the guy that used to own them, I must buy him beer...

I also managed to pick up a 6" Newt + LXD-75 mount for under €200, one year old unused, with a broken lead on the battery box. The wife of the seller bought it new for the husband, who never used it. I told them I could fix the battery lead for them, but they just wanted rid of it. It's now my main mount.

Being in Ireland makes it harder to pick up the real bargains as the astro community is just that bit smaller and the pool of bits to pick up is a lot smaller as well. I keep seeing decent bargains in the UK and in the US but I just can't collect them!

[sologuitarist61]

I have to admit that if you have the time auctions are great places to find bargains. Anything that isn't the usual dross (crockery, porcelain, pictures etc) seems to throw people and they don't bid. Have managed to get old film cameras for under a fiver and then moved them on through EBay and made a bob or two.

Really annoyed at the last auction which happened whilst I was on holiday, where a Celestron C9.25 came up and went for silly money. Went to a good home but ...... damn!!

[Radders]

I've never been lucky finding bargains but have thought about looking for astro stuff at charity shops.

Has anybody thought the same or actually brought anything astro related from them?

Radders

[sologuitarist61]

I've never been lucky finding bargains but have thought about looking for astro stuff at charity shops.

Has anybody thought the same or actually brought anything astro related from them?

Radders

Go in them quite a bit (or should I say, get dragged around them) but have never seen anything astro-wise.

[LeeB]

Our local charity shop is great for books picked up at least a dozen good ones over the last couple of years for no money

[bottletopburly]

picked up a small patrick moore book at the car boot today for a quid