You can actually get a good buy on eBay because I have sold three iMacs and two BlackBooks on eBay and each was barely six months old. I sold them because Apple came out with newer, faster models and I generally took a loss of anywhere from $100 to $200 in each sale. I consider that loss to be a similar rental fee that would have been paid to use the machines.
In each case I have pimped the machines out to full maximum hardware. iMacs and BlackBooks got as much RAM as possible and biggest hard drives offered. A majority of eBay sellers have turned selling into a job/business. These are the "Power Sellers" - people who are generally professional sellers so they tend to sell at higher prices. Look for small everyday sellers with good feedback ratings of at least 20 or more sales/buys.
Every time I have put an item up it has sold within three days and usually grabbed with the BuyIt button. This is because, if the buyer does a little homework, they see the hardware being offered is slightly used but at a very good price. I sold my last BlackBook (2.16Ghz, 3G RAM, 200G HD, SupeerDrive) for $1600. I paid about $1750 for itand it was just six months old. That was a good buy.
I won't sell to anyone that doesn't have a 95% or higher rating and at least 20 sales/buys and a confirmed PayPal address. I even state that in my auctions. I'm continually amazed by people who write private messages offering to pay cash if I will close the auction and sell directly to them. NOT gonna happen.
Another fine avenue for buying good Apple machines at lower prices is buying the refurbished items sold by Apple themselves. To many refurbished means a bad machine was sent back and some third party company has tried to fix it cheaply and put it back on the market. That is far from the quality of an Apple refurbished item. Apple makes their own products so when they go back to Apple the faulty part is replaced with the same high quality Apple part. The only difference between a refurbished Apple computer and a brand new Apple computer is the fact that it was once used, either as a demo or purchased by a customer who returned it for some reason or another. That refurbished computer goes through the very same 200 hour testing process as all brand new Apple computers and Apple almost always offers a low cost AppleCare plan with it. The only difference is the packaging. A refurbished Apple product comes in plain brown box while a brand new Apple product arrives in Apple's beautiful packaging. That's so the buyer cannot go back to eBay with the refurbished produced and try and sell it as "new".
I just bought my second 30" Apple HD Cinema display for $1300 (retails for $3300). Go to the Apple refurbished online store and monitor it because the items listed there go quickly.
Good luck.
Tim...
