A couple years back I went to a Ham Radio Swap meet  - a yearly event I cant afford to miss out on – lots of junk, crowds and things to buy . I drag my son into these places for someone to push people out of the way and an extra pair of hands plus some good company ..plus I think he likes to see some of the vintage computers.

One of my  many (trunk load) purchases there was an old Series 2 TiVo which I purchased for 10.00 (against my sons pleading that it was an “error” to purchase it and  NOT going to get ANYTHING for it  )

 When we got back home – I hooked it up and checked what I could without a subscription etc –It had a few shows on the drive (Matlock I think)  and seemed to work fine using the remote. Checking on eBay I found that

I would be lucky to get  even my 10.00 back – probably 20 listed even one for a fixed price of 12.00 with free shipping.

I do not believe in listing anything under 9.99 a listing  (even that’s way to low ) AND  with the competition on eBay looked bleak even to recover my money let alone my time and gas to go 60 miles .

So after thinking about it I figured  – to take this apart and sell the parts – I checked eBay and found only larger TiVO  hard drives for sale but no other parts – I wiped the contents of the drive (no more Matlock)- TiVo come apart faster than you can believe

It disassembled into the following :

Motherboard

Hard drive

Power Supply

Front Panel

Remote + Instruction Manual

Cable set (unused)

I listed each item at  19.99 and sold every listing at that price  withing 6 months 

 Three points here are

 1)usually the component parts are worth more than the unit itself

2) know what you are buying

3)Learn from your mistakes

What may look bad – can turn out good

I have found Laptops, Zenith  Transoceanics, TiVos, Computers can be worth a lot more torn down , plus far more easier to ship and sell – of course  always weigh  outyour time and ability