Buying used or sight unseen speakers a bad idea?

Buying new is a far bigger risk than buying used. If the new piece does not live up to expectation you take a 30% hit. If you buy the used piece at the right price you are out shipping cost at most. Case in point - I have gone through 4 pairs of high end speakers over the last decade and written off a grand total of $500. Most I used for a few years and resold for what I had into them. I only got screwed once in a decade buying and selling on A'gon (on a cheap cable). Folks here are extremely reliable - look for sellers with feedback. Another piece of advice. Stay away from the very esoteric stuff, no matter how good a deal you get - very hard to resell if you don't like it. Better pay 40-50% of MSRP for say a pair of cardas cables than 25%-30% of MSRP for a garage operation brand. The cardas will resell in a heartbeat, the garage brand you may get stuck with.

Now, buying on Ebay is a different story.....

Which reminds me. The ONLY time I ever got screwed on A'gon in 10 years was by a guy with no feedback, new to the site. He got kicked off after I escalated the issue, but could of course easily set up a new account with a different email address.

There is a member dispute link on the member page. One more thing. If you want to have recourse for your transaction you need to use paypal. They will block the funds in the sellers account the moment you raise a dispute until the issue is reolved. You pay 3%, but it is a from of insurance.

If buying "sight unseen" from anonmymous sellers was generally causing a lot of trouble this would be reflected in far more negative feedback than what is actually there(and the demise of audiogon). Typically, feedback is overwhelmingly positive, indicating problems are the rare exception and smooth transactions are the rule.