Top Tips for Buying Second-Hand Exercise Equipment

In yesterday’s post, we ran through a number of essential things to take into account when beginning a brand new work-out routine. One of those points was the cost of buying the minimum equipment, and we considered some advice to not start off a new exercise program – one that you’ve never done previously – if you need to spend loads of money to start. By preventing expensive set-up costs, if you decide that you do not enjoy it within a few weeks, you’re not tossing well-kept, and costly, machinery away.

Accordingly, one technique for saving cash is to purchase pre-owned gym equipment. The bigger pieces of gym equipment – for example exercise bikes and weight machines – can cost upwards of a few hundred dollars, often climbing into the low thousands. Through buying second-hand fitness equipment, you will have a chance to lower your expenses by hundreds or maybe thousands of dollars. Plus the ironic idea is that you’re probably sourcing the equipment from a person who paid all that money without first simply testing the equipment for a few weeks at their local gym, and then decided that they would their new stationary bike. Then, a handful weeks or months later, the exercise machine is already sat idle, and they determine to sell it off at a loss.

The other category of vendor is a person who loves their piece of equipment, has used it every day for one or two years, and wishes to swap to a brand new model with more bells and whistles. Or maybe they desire a replacement, and are selling their second-hand elliptical trainer to allow room for a new weight training machine. The last style of vendor is the calculated scam artist, who will put up for sale some equipment that looks OK, aware that it will not last very much longer as it is already worn out. So what you’ll read below emphasises a few places to come across second-hand training equipment, and a few ways to protect yourself from a swindle, deliberate or not.

The two main places to discover second-hand fitness equipment for sale are in personal sales, and in a company selling overhauled machines The personal trades – either offline in your local classified ads paper, or online using sites like Ebay.com and Craiglist.com – are in general individuals who bought the gear and who haven’t utilised it much. But, as discussed previously, you might encounter the sporadic individual who has almost exhausted their equipment, and is planning to upgrade it to a more recent machine.

Accordingly, if you can, you should aim to look at the purchase in person. If you get into contact with the vendor and they won’t allow you to see the purchase before the sale, then do not buy it. A legitimate seller of an unused piece of equipment should not have a problem allowing you to you check it, because the exercise equipment is almost in it’s original condition, except for maybe a water mark where it has been a place to hang wet clothes to dry!

When you manage to preview the machine, actually use it for a while. Do this for long enough for the machine to get warmed up, as from time to time exercise equipment will develop odd noises once everything is up to working temperature. Mount the machine and really get to work – you shouldn’t merely sit next to the equipment and watch it run itself. Remember that your mass on the machine may well make known a noise or a vibration that you’re worried about. If you have not previously exercised with a comparable machine in the past, try to bring an acquaintance who has, as they possibly will notice something that you can not The seller may well show concern about two strangers calling on their residence, so you might propose they have someone else in attendance also.

Obviously, purchasing a piece of equipment via Ebay is extremely unlikely to grant you this attempt to assess the purchase, because it might be on the far side of the country. Then again, Ebay.com and comparable auction websites offer a feedback system where sellers and buyers can evaluate each other in terms of how professionally they behaved all through the auction, and on the condition of the merchandise sold. If the vendor of the used fitness equipment has sold through Ebay in the past, make a point of check out their profile to find out what other Ebay customers have said. If you still have a few questions that are not dealt with in the auction itself, contact the vendor with your questions. If you still do not get reasonable answers, don’t put in a bid. There will be another related machine available tomorrow.

Comparable to any similar big spend, purchasing used fitness equipment is a terrific technique to save money, but it can also cause problems if you get equipment that isn’t what was promised. So follow reasonable measures, and you may well attain a significant bargain. To finish, as mentioned earlier, the alternative type of used work-out equipment is remanufactured items, and we’ll take a look at them in tomorrow’s article.