Auction deals that I've made in Finland - combined buyer and seller - over 10 years combined are more than 1500. In eBay more than 500. I agree with the 1% figure.
VCRs are over 5% failure rate for me but this is expected. I don't think most sellers do it intentionally. Nowdays I distrust very much private sellers which seem to know something about selling VCRs and choose right buzzwords and sell a lot of stuff. I rather choose genuine business seller with verified VAT ID or "real" private seller with occasional deals and better chance of him/her selling something from own use rather than something found in a garage sale / auction lot. Just my experience so far.
Straight out of my hat I can remember about 6 JVC SVHS/DVHS units I've bought from different places (one new), and 5 of them required minor or major service before 100 hours of use. With Panas the failure number is a bit lower at this moment, but more than half have needed some kind of tune up (this excludes one NTSC HDTV JVC which worked like a charm).
I've lost atleast 2-3 VCRs because of bad packaging. I always ask the seller to pack them well and offer to pay for packaging materials. Only really good packaging so far has been from "charly_rackslider". I just don't get how it can be so difficult even after explaining why I want it and are willing to pay a lot for it to be done.