Hi glort,
Yeah - I read your story on the mower. Made me chuckle (but also made me mad on your behalf about the lying ****s).
I have a simple rule with eBay: If it says "untested", it means it's broken, and the seller couldn't get it to go... Using that as a default position, and bidding accordingly, I have (occasionally) been pleasantly surprised... The irony is, I found the boot on the other foot a few months ago: I sold an old 19" server cabinet, a big sturdy Dell thing. In the bottom of it was my old APC UPS. Since I couldn't be arsed digging out the cables to plug it all in, I splashed "untested" liberally around the auction (it'd been sat, unused, for around 8 years at this point). So finally the cab sells, and I've rolled it out to be picked up, and figured I really ought to give it a try.... so found a cable just as the buyer turns up. I said, we can test the UPS now if you like, to which he agrees... Anyway, 15 seconds of loud buzzing, a pop and large cloud of magic smoke later, we conclude that it's broken... Never mind I said, I've got another one on the shelf, almost as unused, you can have that instead. Sometimes I'm just too bloody good to people.
It's the liars that annoy me most. "Untested", yet when you get the thing, it's obviously had someone trying everything to make it work. "Barn find" when it's in the garage attached to the side of your house. Or rusting away on your parents driveway. "Rare" when there's 50 identical items for sale at the same time ("Ultra rare" if there's 5 or less identical ones for sale). etc.
Mike - in fairness, I didn't take much notice of the price; but looking at that engine, it's been sat outside for a long long time with nothing covering it. It is, of course, quite possible (if the insides are sufficiently oily) that it will just need a bit of a clean up to run again; but I'd guess the entire fuel system will need an overhaul, the valve springs will need replacing, the whole valve and head assembly will likely need dismantling, cleaning up, probably the valves will need grinding in again, and so on. Definitely not a "little bit of a clean up"! After all, if it just needed a little bit of a clean up, surely the vendor would have done that, posted a video of it running, and charged a legitimate $800 as glort says...