I'm jealous too and I know I'd have spent waaaaayyyy more than that. Good thing it's not around here.
You could almost be in the business of refurbishing and reselling machines
Uhh, been there, done that. Now he just wants to keep all of them!!!
Joe still does some here and there for ppl when they ask if we know anyone who fixes old machines. He charges $25 to clean, oil and tune up but if parts are needed, they have to order them and bring them to me. We used to buy machines everytime we left the house, made quite a bit of money on eBay back when it was new but now it's just to much trouble and Joe doesn't really have time. We still buy them and he fixes them up but mostly they go to the attic.
We went to a school auction once, got the high bid and took all 25 cabinet machines home after we let a couple disappointed little ol' ladies have one each for our high bid price. We spent a little over $300 and sold all of them, plus the extra foot pedals/accessories separately for no less than $75 and one of them went for over $200 if I remember correctly. We donated a couple of the nicer cabinets and burned the rest of them when we moved. Sniff, sniff, those were the days!!!
Kathy