Buying a Used Reel---A Positive Experience.

[Gfish]

Have wanted to see what the older Daiwa SeaLine series reels are about for some time now. Found several on ebay. The prefered sellers had the "best offer" option avalible which always entices me, even though I know they'll jack the price a little relative to the fair market value. They took my minus-$10 offer. Shipping seemed reasonable and should never exceed $12 for a reel of this size, IMO. The ebay ad had good photos and I could see that there was very little external wear. Shipping was timely, but, check out the packaging!:

[Gfish]

Can't see it real well, but in the 2nd picture, there's external fold-over bubble-wrap, a 2nd layer of taped bubble wrap(with ebay specialty tape!) and a thick zip-lock type bag containing the reel. They used an ebay box and even had an ebay plastic shipping cover for the box. That's how it's done!

The reel. Everything's functional, feels like it needs a ball bearing cleaning, drag washer change and then a line replacement will be needed. There's an excellent tutorial for this model in the Daiwa section by Porthos. There's the "greedybucket" grey(but see through) band on the photos, but that won't hamper anyone on a tutorial.

[Gfish]

There's been a number of negative-eBay and shipping problem-threads here over the years. IMO, this was a near perfect-purchase/shipping-experience and the best for me so-far. In fact most of mine have been good overall. A couple not so much, but none have been complete disasters yet(knock on wood).

[Brendan]

Very clean reel. Nice success story.
Brendan.

[mo65]

   She's a beauty G! I too have been eyeballing those reels...they seem to be very well built. Packaging is so important when shipping these reels. I bought this 5500c a few days ago, and it was packed in a bag. The bent handle was the result. I've already straightened it, even though that stock handle will be replaced soon.

[Swami805]

I have a stock 5500c handle here Mike if you want it. Took a page out of your book and got an assortment handles from China, very cost effective and actually decently built. Let me know and I'll send it to you.

[Cor]

That reel look like in perfect condition   Probably not seen much use.

Those early Diawas are robust and nice reels.

Good luck!

[Crow]

You guys are picking up some good stuff !

[Benni3]

Two nice looking reels,,,, mo was it sent fedx,,,, that's the only way I know to how make a rattlesnake meaner just ship them fedx,,,,,

[Jenx]

If that seller you bought that reel off of is selling other fishing equipment then it might be nice to post his/her name in here so we can all buy from them in the future.

There is nothing worse than a seller who doesn't care about the safety of an item they are shipping. I've collected some strange things over the years, and one of those is vintage cereal boxes. With an emphasis on uncirculated, unfolded boxes. I once bought a 50+ year old cereal box off of someone that was in mint condition. The box had never been glued together, and it looked like it had been stored away untouched for half a century. The seller carelessly ships it to me in a padded envelope with no protection against being bent. The cereal box arrived with a big crease down the middle of it. Decades of loving care ruined in minutes by one careless seller.

[Swami805]

I've had 2 very old penn reels with very nice boxes where the seller just left the reel loose in the box, then the box loose in the outer packaging. The boxes had holes punched thru them as you can imagine. You can imagine what would happen with a 9/0 senator. The rub was I messaged the seller when I bought them on how to ship and offered to pay extra to do so. It really is a shame.
Post that sellers name G, be nice to know the good ones. Nice Sealine, hope you get a chance to fish it!

[happyhooker]

Glad it worked out; nice looking reel.

Frank

[Donnyboat]

Should be good greg, the sea lines are nice reels, I think the rings are stainless steel, get the bearings relubed, & it will fish reel good.
     Mo,Mike, I recently had a reel posted like that, arrived with the knob broke right through, thats the reel I placed the bike rubber onto it, works great now, cheers Don.

[wfjord]

Nice score.  I have a Sealine 47H I bought new back in the mid-'80s that I liked quite a bit.  It even casted nicely!

With a very few exceptions, most of my ebay purchases have been well packed and good experiences.

[oc1]

I am usually complaining that there is too much packaging and tape to hack through.
-steve