Ever scored an awesome deal on photography gear...?

As grow older, I start learning the value of a buck and realize there are things I want in life more than toys. So I started shopping around, for gear that was a pretty good bang for the buck and did something different for me. The way I saw it was instead of spending $1700 on a shiny new nikkor lens (i've got nothing against Nikon btw)..I realized; $1700 could be a month's mortgage payment. Having my own house with a yard, gets so many more points than the lens...IMO.

Well recently I had a bit of good luck of buying gear on ebay. I came across a vivitar 135mm f/2.3 Manual Focus lens. Judging by the specs...it seemed to be an awesome piece of glass that I scooped up dirt cheap ($115)...amazed by it's value; I started looking for more vivitar glass. About 3 weeks after; I saw a $150; 100-400mm f/4.5-6.3 AF lens...figured why not. So I bought it. Genius me; I thought the lens was a manual focus lens. Used it a few times as one; didn't even realized I turned off the internal AF motor on my camera. Bored one evening; I decided to play with it. Realizing then the lens was an AF capable lens. Talk about a DOH moment. AF turned out to be a tad slow; but I couldn't argue the additional range for the price. One downfall though, lens was silver.

As Art always told me, real cameras have to be black. So I kept my new found lens tucked away. Being curious again; I decided to find a silver nikon d50 body to mount that silver lens on. I guess I'm anal about certain things. So I browse around for a few weeks on "the bay" as we frequent bayers call it. I come across a "broken but repairable" Nikon D50 silver. Added it to my watch list. Time comes around, I bid like a nut job for it.

Talk about a win; All said and done $78 shipped. Woohoo I thought, can get the body repaired by nikon & I have a spare body and one to match my weird piece of glass.

USPS slowly delivers my package on wednesday...not paying much mind to a broken body, I toss it up on the shelf in my closet. Figuring I'll get to it when I have not much to do.

After dealing with a crappy day at work, with hectic weather and an inconsiderate DME unit. I come home with not much to do. No one feels like heading out, so I'm stuck home solo. I see the package on the top of my closet looking at me with it's shiny blue USPS label...wanting to be opened. I decided why not... So I open the package.

Physically the camera looks great. Broken plastic around the viewfinder. No worries, Nikon can take care of that. Other than that...body appeared to be in acceptable condition. So I decided to investigate this said damage; of a blown shutter. I throw a battery in; camera starts up normally. Hmm, interesting...

Then I toss on a normal 18-55mm DX lens...Camera takes pictures normally too. But everything appears black. After a quick inspection; turns out the dial was on manual with a setting of 20. Okidoki I said; throw it on auto. Take a picture... "Oh ****; camera works!"... Well i'll be damned, turns out user error.

Paired up with my silver 100-400mm; it looks to be an awesome combo. Heck I thought to myself...I just assembled a cheap plane spotting setup for under $250...with pretty good capabilities.

So now I'm wondering; have any of you guys come across awesome steals on any of your gear...? If so; share a story & thanks for reading mine.