Excalibur - Scratch and Dent sale?

Welcome to another instalment of the Be Prepared Channel. Today I am doing something a little different. I know we have not addressed dehydrators yet on the blog and I promise we will be doing some episodes showing a couple of dehydrators, comparing them, and we will do a mini review of these. We will also give you a step by step tutorial on how to use these and give you the benefits of dehydrating. In this episode I am going to show you a deal we ran across on the Excalibur 9 tray dehydrator with thermostat and timer. Since you occasionally run across a deal like this and are not sure if it is a good deal or not I thought it might be helpful for others to see what I received for my money.

I was listening to The Survival Podcast a couple of weeks ago and and the guest on the show was Tammy from dehydrate2store.com. What a wonderful lady, and she has some fantastic tutorials on how to use a dehydrator and how to prepare meals with dehydrated food. Here is the episode info if you would like to hear the show:

Episode-367 An Interview with Tammy Gangloff of Dehydrate2Store

I have been looking at the Excalibur after watching a bunch of episodes of Tammy from dehydrate2store.com. I already have some Nesco American Harvest dehydrators which are a good deal for the money, but the Excalibur looked very good and the thermostat and timer is a huge bonus. After listening to The Survival Podcast I went searching to see if I could find a deal on one of these. I have looked previously and never have caught a deal on one. Well that day was my lucky day. I happened to notice an eBay listing for the Excalibur 9 tray model and it was listed by the Excalibur company as a scratch and blemish sale. This is for the 3926T model. Here is the URL on eBay for this deal:

http://cgi.ebay.com/Excalibur-Dehydrator-3926T-Factory-Blemished-Model_W0QQitemZ110491732974QQcmdZViewItemQQptZSmall_Kitchen_Appliances_US?hash=item19b9d20bee

Now it is always a little risky on these kinds of deals. You don't know if it is really Excalibur that is selling these or a cheap Chinese knockoff, or just what kind of blemishes we are talking about, but I decided to take a chance. If you have been in the market for one of these you know the price is a good deal. But is it a good deal?

The Excalibur 3926T:
This product retails for $299.95, they sell it for $249.95 on their site. If you look around to find one used or deeply discounted you just won't find them. This is a top quality product that comes with a 10 year warranty. This blemish model I ordered comes with the same brand new 10 year warranty. The 3926T showed up today and so I thought I would take some pictures and give you my impressions so far.

The box:
The grand opening:

Removal from the box:
Removal from the bag, facing the left side of the dehydrator if you were looking from the front door of the unit:
Facing the right side of the unit if you were facing it from the front door of the dehydrator:
Facing the rear of the unit:
Facing the front of the unit:
What comes with the unit(dehydrator guide, and registration/warranty card):
Inside the unit(there are 9 trays with a mesh liner that goes on each tray:
Now to highlight the blemishes, pictures have a hard time picking up the things I noted with this unit, but I will describe them below:

This first picture is of the front door, right next to the Excalibur logo to the right of it is a spot that is slightly lighter than the rest of the unit. It actually isn't that easy to see. I tried to put a lot of light on this and get in close so you can see it. This is the blemish I guess for the unit.
This next photo shows the top near the controls. There is are some slightly darker spots there which are very hard to see with the eye, and frankly the camera just isn't able to pick them up. Here is a picture in the hopes that maybe you can see what I am referring to. These spots have a slightly different feel from the rest of the surface and are really very difficult to see. So I am probably just looking for stuff to point out! LOL

So that is the extent of the scratch, dent, blemishes on this unit. The worst of it being a slightly off color spot on the door which is not easy to see. So the question is this... Are these spots enough to make me return it? Nope! It looks pretty good, and considering the discount they are giving for these I would say it is quite a deal.

Summary:
If your in the market for a premium quality dehydrator this could be the unit to buy. I don't know how often they have these sales so I don't know that I would wait to snag one of these. My dehydrator had obviously been opened previously. It does not look like it had ever been plugged in or used. And overall it looks like new. Other than the nit picky things I pointed out it looks like a very good buy on the Excalibur.

Thanks for reading... See you next time!