[fisheye freak]

Hi all,
We have a thread for best eBay purchases, but more important, how about those BAD ones. More useful to know what to avoid. We will start off with a couple of my bad experiences.
Bought a supposedly new and unused binocular microscope. It was poorly stored, and although it was unused, it was so riddled with fungus that it was unusable and unfixable. Also, cement between glass elements had hazed, also unfixable. Only the stand was worth anything. The guy refused to believe there was fungus until I sent him photos. Eventually I received a partial refund as the postage was high, but the item is basically useless, leaving me with the hassle of getting rid of the parts. Most of my bad experiences have been with camera and other optical equipment. Fungus in particular. In this day and age, the cost of repair is usually more than the lens is worth and often the damage has etched in to the glass itself making it irreparable.

[kenafein]

So far my only fungus lens is a Super Tak 28/3.5, on the rear element only. I was going to fix it but the price of the spanner is 16 bucks and I have an A 28/2.8 I am happy with. I might fix it someday or I might just offer it up for the price of shipping to a PF member. I bought a Voigtlander 28 that ended up being a very poor quality lens, but the seller had a great return policy and even paid the return shipping, so I can't call that a bad experience.

[fisheye freak]

Nice ,sharp lens that 28 f/3.5 . You can improvise a tool to remove that rear element to remove the fungus before it eats in to the coating and glass. Rear element fungus does more to degrade the image than front end fungus.