I think I got a good deal. It's nice to win one on Craigslist for a change.
Here's the ad that my spouse spotted this morning (posted 2 AM this morning, cut & pasted with verbatim grammar, spelling, and upper/lower case):
ipad 2 16gb for sale - $300
ITEM IS IN GREAT SHAPE. WIFI ONLY BUT U CAN UPGRADE TO GET YOUR OWN SERVICE
BEST OFFER OKAY
Hmm, clearly a hard-nosed negotiator. I e-mailed my phone number and indicated that when she called I'd drop everything and come running. She finally called back in the late afternoon and turned out to be the chatty type who has to tell you about her day for 10 minutes before she's ready to do business. I was supposed to sit there and listen. She finally said "I have a lot of e-mails about this iPad. Is $300 a good price?" I told her I'd have to see it before I could decide. I didn't mention that the Apple store had reconditioned iPads for $319 and that hers was the second-cheapest one on Craigslist. She had decided that $300 was the right price and she wasn't going to change her mind.
My usual Craigslist seller involves a 40-minute drive across the island, maybe the item resembles the photo, and perhaps they have the box too. Missing parts are common. Everything else is a shrug or a blank stare. Sometimes they want to talk but usually they're in the middle of moving and everything is chaos.
This time I only had to drive two miles to meet her at a parking lot. She was in a black Cadillac Escalade, running the A/C and the engine with her window down while we were talking. She seemed too overweight to be bothered with getting out of the vehicle, so she just passed things out to me through the driver's window. She was in a hurry to meet her friends at the movie theater but I still got the entire blow-by-blow history of the iPad, from her driving into the parking lot of the military exchange store until she decided to sell it. She spent $620 for it last August. It's the black case and it's pristine. She also gave me the box with its original wrapping, the "old" charger & cable, the original sales receipt, all the documentation, the Apple logo decals, and even the little paper-clip tool to pop open the 3G SIM tray. She bought the transferable two-year extended warranty for $99, she bought the black leather case for $35. She watched a couple movies on it and checked her e-mail once, but she hadn't used it "for a few months". I clicked the home button and tried the icons, and its WiFi antenna managed to find a couple routers near the parking lot. It seemed fine. She said it didn't have anything saved on it and she'd upgraded to an iPad3. As far as she was concerned, the iPad2 was yesterday's news and the iPad3 was her new shiny toy. I have no idea why she bought the iPad2 in the first place, let alone the iPad3. Of course I can't even tell that it was her iPad2 but she had the unlock code for it.
I managed not to wag my tail and I kept the goofy grin off my face, while reluctantly agreeing that it was worth $300. She rolled up her window as soon as I handed over the cash, and she was out of the parking lot before I even got back to my car.
So now I'm tweaking the settings, downloading software, and charging it up. I'm looking forward to reading one of my eBooks on it tonight, and tomorrow I'm going keyboard testing.