Which is rarer? Winning lottery ticket or working tape deck?

Fourteen tape decks, Fourteen repair bills

 

I love my Dragon. It can make an old prerecorded cassette sound amazing not to mention how great a home recorded tape can sound. A few years ago Willy Herman did a tune up for me and said I was good to go for another 20 years. I was looking at the new cassette deck that the link above showed. $4500.00 new. For a lot less money someone could buy a Dragon and have Willy do a rebuild on it and have an iconic cassette deck.

 

My Nakamichi CR1a is from around 1990, and I bought it used around 1998. I rarely use it anymore, but it has never not worked.

 

Having a working cassette deck IS winning the lottery.

 

My Technics RS-515 from the mid nineties seems to still work fine. Never been serviced.

Or just buy a brand new professional deck: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1079891-REG/tascam_202mkvi_dual_cassette_deck.html

 

I wish I could still buy a box of 10 TDK SA-X 90s for $24.99.

 

What did he charge you for that?
I've tried talking to him; I used to work in Orinda
Nice fella but will not let anything go parts wise, even to someone that's NOT in competition with him
And, he only wants to work on a handful of machines (at least that's what he conveyed to me)
Had one of these on my bench not to long ago; tried to talk to him about this machine (I needed some literature) and I thought his head would explode!:

 

I have seen this problem with cassette deck purchases on an another audio forum with a mix of European and US members.
I have bought around a dozen cassette or r to r tape decks via an auction site, mainly from the UK, Germany & Netherlands and have only had a couple or three that needed attention.
However, one Nakamichi did come, seized-up in a dog duvet, from sheep country in Northern England.
Reading feedback of vendors carefully, has mostly ensured things had a satisfactory outcome here for me.
Reading between the lines, it would appear that you guys in the US have inherited a disproportionally large number of dodgy vendors/entrepreneurs, spawned by my own and other's European forefathers who were bold enough, or forced hard enough, to emigrate and become prospectors and snake oil salesman.