Panasonic AG-1980 VCRs from TGrantPhoto!
 

I just bought a refurbished AG 1980 for roughly $320 with shipping. Working awesome, very happy with purchase. I bought one before on eBay and kept popping out tapes, and ended up getting one from him. Very happy. Not sure how much these go for but considering how much repairs/refurbishment can cost, its a good buy.

$320 is not bad if it works 100% perfectly. The market for used AG1980s used to be arounud $250 each, but in recent years that has climbed some since so many have issues from failing caps. Keep in mind that this VCR was $2k+ new, so $320 is nothing.

Repairs can be as much as $400 on top of the $100-200 VCR price. But again, a $2k+ unit for $500-600 is still a bargain.

If you want good tools, you have to buy them. They're not free!

https://www.southernadvantage.com/Pa...iting-VCR.html

This I cannot wrap my head around

If it's new, and has a 3-year warranty, I'm not really surprised. The thing about caps is they die based on age, not use. So a 3-year warranty will bite them in the ass, since basically every AG-1980P unit out there is hitting their capacitor death time of ~10 years. Then again, for almost $2k, it'd better be a good deal. I just have a hard time imaging anybody wanting them now, aside from larger cash-flush studios with a large project backlog.

Southern Advantage has pretty absurd prices on most of what they sell
and i highly doubt that is NIB - it is most likely one they refurbed

Well the prices are very reasonable. I do not remember having them sold at Wally.
$2K in 1995-2000 was a lot of money. If you adjust that to the real inflation......, you would not afford one now. I dealt with them only once and quality was not there. Probably bad luck or something. Warranty does not matter to me because you do not need any warranty if you have it refurbished with care. Like I said the prices are very reasonable and people like to have warranty because they are used to buy crap. This units are probably the bests in performance and very reliable. Just have them fixed right. Never encountered one unit that could not be fixed. Even the plastic is of very good quality.
Good luck.