Not counting when I sold stereo stuff 30 years ago, and got my stuff for dealer's cost, I've hit the jackpot several times:
My friend bought several "dead" NEC and Phillips surround recievers and amps when a local store closed up for a total of 500 bucks for all of them. He sold me one of the NEC amps, and one of the Phillips recievers for 50 bucks each. The Phillips I didn't want to keep, but finding the cause of the dead right front channel took about 10 minutes (really bad solder joint on the speaker wire connectors). I sold it for $150 (about half mail order price) to a neighbor who still has it, hooked up to his PC.
The NEC was totally dead, but was a really simple fix. A voltmeter showed almost no change across the power switch when it was turned on or off. It turned out that there was some sort of sealer on the switch terminals and after a little filing to get down to the copper base metal, the solder stuck, and it worked fine for 15+ years until the filter caps exploded one morning when I turned it on. I had it hooked up to my PC at that point.
Other deals were getting a Sony 5.1 surround receiver to replace the NEC for 99 bucks when BB had it mispriced. For the PC it was great, but for HT, it wasn't going to cut it, so I sold it recently for 68 bucks. Not bad for 3 years of heavy use. I got a 12" Sony sub for 99 dollars too, when it was mismarked at BB. I'm still using it, but soon it will go up on Ebay and be repalced with a better one, as soon as I can swing it.
I got a pretty decent Onkyo cassette deck when I was in some small town in Alabama and the single local HIFi store was closing after the owner had a stroke. I got the deck, new in the box, a full roll of the monster cable 10 guage speaker wire (250', don't remember the name the wire was called), a case of those metal cased TDK cassettes, a case of Maxell high end cassettes, a bunch of "speaker pins", a set of 28" speaker stands (metal, full of sand), a few 3' RCA cable pairs, and a whole bunch of knobs he had in a box, all for $150, less than the deck alone went for here in town!
But some of the deals I got when I was a dealer were amazing. Around April or May every year, and in the fall, I would get a flyer from the wholesaler, and the close outs would always shock me. I bought several different fairly high end receivers for 20% of what they went for on sale at the local places for(One example: Highland Appliance would get $300, I paid $60, sold them for $125). I marked them up 100-150% from what I paid, and always sold them instantly. I had a large student network that spread the word fast when I had a deal going, and they didn't last long. I had a whole lotta cash for a 16-20 year old kid, and a room full of boxes all the time. Every so often, the guy at the wholesaler would call me up with some insane price on a new model, usually Panasonic/Technics, or Pioneer, and once in a while, Kenwood. The Pana/Technics stuff was nearly bulletproof, I think I had one problem with something the entire time I was selling stuff, but the cheaper Kenwood and Pioneer receivers had major soldering problems, and it caused me a lot of headaches. The worst was Sansui, soldering issues, and tape heads being wired to play tapes in reverse were the worst. I only sold Sansui if some customer really wanted it bad.
The best part was playing with all the new stuff!
Sure wish i had that adcom now as I've been without full use of my system for over a month.
