Ask For it: And You Shall Receive!....

This is an update to my previous blog posts about my attempt at getting a used Olympia Cremina manual lever espresso machine.

-It all started October of last year when I was casually browsing Ebay for any good deals on lever espresso machines (I know,  like I don't have enough machines levers and otherwise already!) and happened to come upon a Cremina; best of all, it was list for an unbelieavable "buy-it-now" price too! Unfortunately, I did not have enough money in my piggy bank Paypal account at the time and I wasn't too sure about the advantages of the Cremina. Someone else eventually bought the machine; that person had an awsome deal!

-Fasting forward, I eventually sold my La Pavoni Professional lever machine to a nice person on CoffeeGeek and become sorely miss the espresso that it produce. Around three weeks ago, late night Craigslist browsing reveal that there was a Cremina 67 in great condition being offered up for sale by a local guy maybe 15 minute away! A quick call to the guy reveal that someone has already "reserve" it by paying $50 extra. Darn! I could have offered some more money and probably get it but I was afraid of eliciting a bidding war. So I let it go again. It turn out someone who belong to the coffee buying club I frequent got this machine; he drive all the way from Wisconsin to get it and the best part is he already have an awsome Cremina.

-Now to the reason why I post this blog: I can hardly contain my excitement because I just got a Cremina! ...From Ebay....and for an awsome deal! It is suposedly belong to the seller grandparent and sat unused on the counter the the last decade or so. The seller advertise it as being in great cosmetic condition; on top of that he (being an engineer and a mechanic) had gone through and replace all the seals with parts from our infamous Orphan Espresso! He said that I won't be needing to do anything when I receive it except to put in water and good coffee.

The obove pictures are from the actual Ebay auction. Seem pretty clean to me for such an old machine; no rust or anything from what I could get from the pictures. The reason that this auction ended at such a great price ($800) was because the buy listed it on the tittle with just the name "olympia espresso" without putting the magic word "cremina" in there. I bet most people who are interested would do a seach term like "olympia cremina". THis is the reason why there was only six bidders on this as oppose to a dozen or so for normal Cremina listing!

I'm eagerly await the arrival of this machine; I hope there is no damages to it during shipment as I have heard so much horror stories about Cremina being damaged during shipment from bad packaging. I had the seller double boxing the Cremina and he promised to do so.  I will update with you guys later next week on how this is turning out! In the meanwhile, I'm keeping my fingers crossed and toast to the coffee-god for bring such a good deal my way!