I would advise the author to just buy the scanner, use it to scan everything, then sell it on. If you make a loss on resale, just consider it the cost of renting a very high quality scanner, but of course there's a significant chance you'll make a profit.
this is good advice. I've done it with everything from weird machine tools (tool and cutter grinder) to woodworking tools to snowboards to guitars. if you don't treat big purchases as permanent, you'd be amazed at what money you can make and what items you can use and enjoy for just the opportunity cost of your capital.
I have a friend who buys lots of used stuff, and sells it the moment he stops using it.
He's extremely patient and waits for a good deal, and usually makes money on the resale.
It lets him go quite deep into a niche hobby without breaking the bank, then when he inevitably gets bored and picks up another hobby it's not a waste.
It's honestly hard for me to sometimes wire my brain to think of total cost of ownership as taking into account the fact that durable goods can really maintain their value. I feel like I've been so conditioned to either hoard things, or worse, just think that they have no resale value from having been purchased once, and that's simply not true.
When you remember that there are decent ways to resell things, and that plenty of classes of hobbyist goods and professional tools maintain their value extremely well, it really changes the entire equation.
Getting into amateur radio had had me do this re-think. The Icom IC-7300 has apparently been the best-selling HF transceiver for several years now (think Toyota Corolla for relative cost and performance), but even so, numbers in the low tens of thousands of units sold since it was introduced. They're 1200-1300 EUR new, and 800-900 EUR several years used. the other models are even more niche.
It is so common for amateur radio enthusiasts to re-sell (and re-re-sell) gear that swap meets are still a central activity of their meetings and conventions.
In most cases yes, but the author said this one was showing signs of the firewire port failing. If it dies in your hands that really sucks financially.
Hardware is repairable, difficulty depends on the mode of failure but if the port itself is faulty that's a pretty easy fix most of the time as long as you can get your hands on a suitable replacement which are (usually) pretty cheap
