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Old machines - are they worth it?


Splint

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I see a lot of old coffee machines, the SG 200 in particular for sale on ebay and other similar sites. The prices of the machines are a fraction of the new price  and I was interested to find out if old machines are priced like that because they are unreliable, expensive to keep properly maintained or produce poor quality coffee. To put the question in perspective I've been in the vending game (combos) for a coupe of years now and have an opportunity to expand into the coffee vending business. The business I'm looking at buying has quite a lot of SG 200s which are in the range of 5 to 10 years old. On a side note I'm also interested to know if anyone has successfully added a CC reader to an older SG200. The seller claims he has, he comes across as pretty open and honest but a second opinion never hurts. Thanks.

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It looks like they are now called the Saeco Rubino 200. They may not be available in the US but I am in Australia. Australia is often used as a trial market for new products which later go on to be sold in many other countries. It is also a dumping ground for large corporations to offload their products when they are nearing the end of their product life cycle, so that's why you may not see them in your area.

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2 hours ago, Splint said:

It looks like they are now called the Saeco Rubino 200. They may not be available in the US but I am in Australia. Australia is often used as a trial market for new products which later go on to be sold in many other countries. It is also a dumping ground for large corporations to offload their products when they are nearing the end of their product life cycle, so that's why you may not see them in your area.

I'll take your word for it.  My concern (for you) is that these units that are "5-10 years old" might possibly be much older.  I'm not saying they are... I have no idea... but it's just something to watch out for.  For vending machines, I have seen so many people make these totally false details such as "purchased new 3 years ago" for a machine that was manufactured in the mid 90's.  It's very possible that these people did  buy the machines 3 years ago, but the machines were refurbished and definitely not used.  I have also seen people say "new, never used" when the units are 20+ years old AND had some clear modifications to them that would have only happened if they were used previously.  Maybe none of this applies to you, but I just don't like seeing people get ripped off.  The SG 200 appears to be a very well-known model so I am sure there are plenty operators out there that could actually give you relative information, but the facts that apply in the states may be different in Australia, such as when machines were manufactured and for how long, as well compatibility with card readers and such.  I also heard you guys ride kangaroos and tie snakes together to form rope so you can catch crocodiles but it might only be a rumor.

 

 

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Thanks AC,

I totally agree regarding people making false claims about the age of machines, I've been caught out on that before with a combo unfortunately. The SG 200s have a build date and serial number tag on the back of the machine. I do have one SG 200 which came with the vending business I bought. It was installed at a site but had been neglected and I don't know how long it had been since it was last running. I was actually on site today and tried to test a card reader system I borrowed from one of my combos. It looked like it could work but required some configuration on the coffee machine side and the Saeco dealer here in Melbourne wasn't  available to offer support. I messaged him and he got back to me later and was pretty negative about older machines in general siting frequent breakdowns. He also said he hadn't had much to do with those particular machines (I guess he hasn't been a Saeco dealer all that long). I'm also concerned about spare parts availability moving into the future, that may be part of the reason they're cheap to buy. I was speaking to the tech engineer for the card reader company and he said some SG 200s can work with card readers and others don't but he couldn't recall all the details as it had been a long time and he hadn't done that much with them. There is another service centre who repairs Seacos, I'll give them a call on Monday and see what they think about the reliability and parts availability and card reader compatibility of the SG 200s. I'll report back with my findings.

Thanks again.

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I see.  Not here in the states.  The industry has mostly walked away from full size coffee machines and onto compact machines.  I'm very interested myself in tapping into the coffee industry but I'm so inexperienced in it.  Technically, I have 15 years experience in vending but very little coffee/ocs.  I don't even know how to bill people for leases.

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This is a Saeco SG200. It stands about 5' tall with the upper and lower unit assembled as in the picture. Sometimes they are used with the upper unit only. I'm not entirely sure how that works because the lower unit seems to be drainage and waste tanks.

Saeco SG200.jpg

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15 hours ago, AZVendor said:

Chris, these machines are not full size machines, they are single cup brewer machines.

I know that.  I'm asking about this for my own knowledge because these compact machines (similar to the sg200) appear to be growing in popularity.  Full-size machines take money and vend a cup.  But I see a lot of compact machines that don't take any money.  I want to learn how the billing works but I just don't have any good source of information.  All kinds of ads will tell you what they can do but not HOW to make money.  I have even called distributors and they give nothing but vague information.

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The machines have a non resettable counter. I imagine you would charge a flat rate per drink if there's nothing more than that. There may also be a more detailed log accessed through the lcd screen, only guessing here, you would have to look into this.

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