Over the years I have been lucky enough to stumble across a whole bunch of great electronics finds... I figued it might be fun to talk about some of our best non-boombox finds in the wild, purchased from a store front... Let's stick to gear purchased where the seller charged tax (or should have 
)...
While it's not my "best" store deal, I recently stumbled across a Sony PCM-R300 DAT Recorder in a Cash America pawn shop. I believe these were in the $700-$800 ballpark when new, and ticket showed it was originally $400 when they put it on the shelf in the store. You could see it had been gradually marked down several times to a $90 clearance price w/30 day return. (I happen to know how to read their tags and can tell they had $250 in it, so I didn't bother to try to beat them up over the tax
). Clearly, it had been there a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGG time, and the manager told me they didn't have a DAT tape to test it with, but promised it worked and offered 30-day return for full refund, Decent ones on ebay sell for upwards of $150, and sometimes less.. So, its not a super-ridiculous deal, but still pretty good considering there was no shipping involved and the player looks minty and is working PERFECTLY!!!!!! I had about a dozen DATs I recorded at various gigs over 10 years ago that I've been jammin' to for the past week!
I took off the rack-mount handles an moved it into a permanent spot under my right side turntable.
In the past I've also been lucky enouth to find these in pawnshops and thrifts:
)... While it's not my "best" store deal, I recently stumbled across a Sony PCM-R300 DAT Recorder in a Cash America pawn shop. I believe these were in the $700-$800 ballpark when new, and ticket showed it was originally $400 when they put it on the shelf in the store. You could see it had been gradually marked down several times to a $90 clearance price w/30 day return. (I happen to know how to read their tags and can tell they had $250 in it, so I didn't bother to try to beat them up over the tax
). Clearly, it had been there a LOOOOOONNNNNNGGG time, and the manager told me they didn't have a DAT tape to test it with, but promised it worked and offered 30-day return for full refund, Decent ones on ebay sell for upwards of $150, and sometimes less.. So, its not a super-ridiculous deal, but still pretty good considering there was no shipping involved and the player looks minty and is working PERFECTLY!!!!!! I had about a dozen DATs I recorded at various gigs over 10 years ago that I've been jammin' to for the past week! I took off the rack-mount handles an moved it into a permanent spot under my right side turntable.
In the past I've also been lucky enouth to find these in pawnshops and thrifts:
- Nakamichi 481 3-head deck, working for $10 (thrift store)
Yamaha M50 120WPC power amp, working for $50 (pawn shop)
Technics SL-1200 MKII for $70, paid another $75 to repair, (pawn shop)
Sansui Tu-9990 Tuner for $25 (thrift store)
Kenwood KA-701 intetraged amp for $25 (thrift store)
Sony Reel to Reel - $5 (thrift store)
Sansui Tuner for $3 - partially working (personally delivered from thrift store in Tennessee )
Oh, and a rockin' set of Sansui SP7500X speakers for $80 off craigslist. The picture below is not mine, but the speakers are the same. Mine also have the original lattice covers.
I've really got to dig in the memory for this thread but I'll try, prices are as close as I can remember Iand I doubt I ever paid more than $25 for anything. Some Items I've sold and some I still have so it's hard to say what's the best ever.
