In my opinion, you should leave the rolls offered you alone. If they
have tracking damage early on, chances are they will be damaged also
near the end of the roll.
If you buy carefully on eBay, you can do much better than this. For
a short while I bought bulk lots of rolls on eBay and discovered that
even if I paid a dollar a roll, when I weeded out the unplayable --
the disintegrating, the maudlin, the dull ballads that sounded like
they were being played by grammar school piano students -- I was really
paying more like $8 per much-used roll. The rest were suitable as
stove wood, and in good conscience I could not put them back on eBay.
Buying on eBay is always a gamble. But if you read the ads carefully
and ask the seller questions, you can do very well. Buying in lots of
four to eight rolls really poses less risk.
Tim Gautreaux
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