Years ago, when I worked at the store, one of my customers was remodeling the house of, shall I say, "a famous northern politician" (who will remain un-named).

He had some old McIntosh gear, which unfortunately was the old solid state variety, but also had... (drum roll please)... a Marantz 10B tuner.

The gear was all given to the contractor, who had no idea what it was or its collector value. After mutltiple phone calls to him, I offered to trade a new Denon receiver and our cheapest pair of speakers, which I picked up for dealer cost. He agreed. I then sold the two McIntosh components for what I had in the Denon receiver and speakers. So in effect, I got the 10B for free -- sort of: It was DOA and took extensive repairs to bring it back to life. But ultimately I got it cleaned up and working again, and now it remains a permanent part of my collection.

For a while the I thought it was the scam of the century. But looking back on it, in all likelihood he would have thrown the 10B out since it wasn't working. So in reality, I saved it from the garbage bin.