Writing for Trademe

I have spent an hour writing up a short piece to persuade someone to buy my beautiful Video Cassette Recorder and have at last got round to loading the information onto Trademe. They say it is 3090 characters too long! I can't let all that creative work go to waste, so here it is as a testament to an hour of wasted time:

Video Cassette Recorder SVHS
Professional Panasonic AG 7350
These days these machines are mostly used as boat anchors but here is one in excellent condition and low head hours all ready to transcribe your VHS and SVHS tapes to DVD or other more permanent archive.

It was given to me by my son who acquired it in Australia and used it lightly in his video production business in the early 1990s. I have run only a few dozen tapes through it during the last ten years. I have just recently cranked it up to play the last of my own conversions to DVD and after a quick cleanup of the heads it ran perfectly. However, as can be seen from my wiring connections, my use of it was fairly unsophisticated so I cannot guarantee that all its other complexities will work perfectly. Indeed, there are switches on this machine which mean nothing at all to me and when I flick the lid off (two screws – no domestic machine was ever so easy to open) I get indigestion just looking at the masses of ICBs. Really, it deserves someone who understands more about it than I do(but I hope you noticed I probably do know what ICBs are). I hope the photos will say everything that you need to know.

One day this will be a collector’s piece as there were not a lot of them. Most people working in SVHS bought a full edit pair with controller (I did and it cost $19000), and while the AG 7350 would have worked quite OK on either side of such a pair, it was usually operated “stand-alone”. The original cost was in the order of $7000, I think, and if I get a good proportion of that back I would feel obliged to offer some of it to my son, so don’t bid too high, please. But you could conceivably make a handsome profit on it as an antique if you buy it at my reserve and hold onto it for, say, about 158 years. That’s what I was going to do; but prostate cancer and downsizing our home have changed all that…

If you don’t want to wait that long, the AG 7350 would make an impressive conversation piece in your lounge. Or you could cut the front panel off and frame it as a picture. Either way; you could sound very knowledgeable about it if you bone up on some of the specifications below and get them into your small talk. It would also work well as a designer doorstop in your loo. Powered up, its lights make an impressive sight in the flowerbeds at night. The possibilities are endless. So, at my reserve this beautiful piece of kit is available for what any vasectomy surgeon would have called a real snip. You could also use it to copy your old VHS and SVHS cassettes onto DVD.

It’s a heavy machine but I can pack it adequately, but without responsibility, for transporting. I think that $25 will cover regular courier but if you want it sent some other way the extra cost might be on you. I can deliver between Paihia and Auckland if you’re not in a hurry – but you can give me $10 for petrol. Or you can, of course, come and collect it. Our Paihia church has a couple of hospitality homes where you can have two nights in Paradise for a very moderate rate ( www.centreforrecreation.org.nz)

Oh, yes, if, by any chance, you do want to use it as a boat anchor, you will have to fit your own ringbolt.