for us who collect saws it's good time
i was to late on two deals locally, nice working 254xpg 120$, 1 beautiful 246 also for 120$.
Seriously, if you are able to find good 254xpg or 242xpg for those kind of prices, figure out what shipping to the US would cost and I'll buy one (or more?) from you.
For some reason there is no love here for the great 246. They languish on the sites forever it seems unless you are giving them away. I see a really nice one on eBay that has been listed multiple times for about $260 with bar and chain (no connection to me) and it just does not sell. I've seen them listed here on the Trading Post with the same result. Put a 242 up there and it is gone fairly fast - what a difference a cylinder/piston/ring make!
I don't get it, either. That is a great saw at a decent price. I think folks just get so used to being able to buy at desperation prices that when a fair price comes up, it feels high.
One other thing that I got to thinking about last night was that maybe part of the problem isn't lack of money as much as it is lack of time. Just yesterday I paid the small engine shop across town to come to my home, pick up one of my generators, clean the carb, and return it, because it made more sense for me to pay them $150 to do this than it did to try to find time to do it myself. Over the last year or so I have sold off all of my project saws and all my parts saws/spare parts collections, because I realized that I will never have the time to tinker with saws. So for me, it makes more sense to simply buy a saw that is good to go, or to pay the shop to work on it for me, because the alternative is that it will sit on a shelf for years at a stretch. I have to imagine that I'm not the only one making this call, and that many people are responding by buying new stuff instead as a hedge (newness, warranty, etc.) against possible downtime and repair issues.