Once in a generation opportunity

[milosdevino]

Check this out
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/252189176129?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
Nothing to do with me, I just wish I had a lazy $330K

 

[photomoof]

Now that is an optimistic seller.

He will be lucky to get 20k USD, and even then the buyer would have to be highly motivated. I have seen these kind of sales a number of times, they sadly go for peanuts.

 

[FrankS]

Yeah, that's just silly. One would have to find full time work with this stuff for 10 years just to pay it off.

 

[Bille]

Imagine charging 100$ per repair job on average. You would need 3300 successful repairs just to pay for the equipment. Doing one repair a day, seven days a week, would take about 9 years to break even. Now factor in tax, labour and rent.

 

[robbeiflex]

This is great advertising but who wants to pay eBay and PayPal a commission on their retirement fund? The higher the price on eBay the better, to avoid an actual sale and yet spark the interest of the very few real potential buyers out there.

 

[f16sunshine]

Reputations are worth more than tools.
A guy like Don Goldberg could probably get more selling his business nam "DAG" than his tool set up.
Most businesses sell for the value of their assets and not much more.
A few dozen manuals at $50 each. A collimator at $1000 tops. Some spanners and other special tools $1000 total.
Some other special stuff maybe another grand.
This set might all go for 1/10th the current asking price. Unless the building is included 😉

 

[Corran]

That's hilarious.

I worked in a few different music instrument repair shops over the course of 10 years. I saw or heard about a few shops going under or owners retiring and their stash of tools and parts were usually sold off for a pittance. The real value in that type of business is the years of knowledge and experience from the repair person, which can't be sold, only learned.

 

[David Hughes]

Hmmm, so a sounder plan would be to retire and run the shop as a training school for a one or two day course now and then...

Regards, David

 

[Roger Hicks]

Hmmm, so a sounder plan would be to retire and run the shop as a training school for a one or two day course now and then...

Regards, David

Dear David,

Very much so, and indeed a repair-man friend of mine in the UK was considering it. I'll have to contact him to see if he ever went any further with the idea.

Unless you know what you're doing, the tools and parts are just so much scrap metal. My guess is that he'll be lucky to get a tenth of what he's asking, even if there are some VERY rare parts there, and that 1% of what he's asking is likelier.

Cheers,

R.

 

[jsrockit]

Still no takers...

 

[hlockwood]

From another oldster: The uniformly poor reviews in the previous posts tell a sad story - mostly, because they're accurate. Some oldsters spend a lifetime building a knowledge base and an accompanying business and learn that the blood, sweat and tears that went into that effort are now (often) useless to succeeding generations. But for many, the journey was well worth the effort, and that is the real payoff.

I hope the seller in this case isn't too devastated by the actual market value of his offering. He should instead look to all of the joy he brought in bringing back to life all those Leicas.

HFL