Page 2: Caution with locomotive offers

Contents

But there is also a lot of work involved in taking over a company. The obvious thing to do is to indulge in the simpler pleasures of life and simply go shopping. But beware, there are locomotive offers lurking around every corner online – including on the railroad's own shopping platform or on the independent, load-optimized DB Cargo site for discarded rolling stock. If you don't fancy model trains, you'll find what you're looking for on a 1:1 scale: Railcar trains, diesel and electric locomotives. Unfortunately, it is very rare to find complete ICE sets on the railroad portals – and you usually have to pick them up yourself.

If you have the time and inclination to tinker and would prefer to build your own ICE, you could therefore switch to another provider: MachineryLine offers machines of all kinds. Punching machines, milling machines, presses, pumps, construction machines of all shapes and colors. However, if the Chinese supplier from Chengdu is not quite right for you, you could also find what you are looking for at resale.de or Innovac. Somewhere between the sand-lime brick production line, chain clearing and cheese dividing machines lurks the little fortune of the true machinery maker.

The cheese dividing machine would be very helpful if you were a food producer yourself. But, as mentioned above, that means a lot of work. Why not simply outsource it and share the risk? Offerings such as Crowdfarming.com are designed to bring consumers and farmers closer together. You can adopt animals, trees or fields and then receive their produce by the crate. Those who would rather do a bit of farming themselves, but only want to try their hand at it, can look for their own small-scale vegetable fortune at Ackerhelden, for example. If vegetables without meat are not enough for you, you can visit crowdbutching platforms such as KaufNeKuh.de: Many people join forces there to have animals cut up – and eat the parts afterward.

Going shopping with the city tank

But now we live in times of limited snackability: If you only want to buy finished products for a short time but have a problem finding a parking space, you could consider a city tank. The offers on Tanks Alot or at panzer-handel.de or the Czech provider Armytechnika.cz have nothing to do with sports utility vehicles (SUVs). And it is probably rather difficult to obtain road approval for some of the vehicles on offer there. However, disputes over tight parking spaces are generally a thing of the past. And anyone who has always wanted to cruise around their private island (see above) in a real gas guzzler, even though they haven't mowed the lawn, will find what they are looking for here in exchange for the necessary small change.

Renewable second-hand trade: Why not a wind turbine?

Solar power production is the opposite of a gas guzzler. The sheer volume of products on the market with comparatively short market cycles for the individual variants creates a used market that should not be underestimated, for example at the provider Second Sol. What is sold there often comes without a guarantee and the models are not the most powerful - but the unit prices per solar panel are once again significantly lower than the already greatly reduced price for new products, so that even buying a voltmeter for testing can pay off. In any case, it makes ecological sense to continue using used products or products that are no longer on the market if the production of every single kilowatt-hour is not relevant.

If you have a little more space in your garden (or your private island, we can't get rid of it), you can also buy a used wind turbine at a comparatively low price. Here too, of course, there is an online second-hand specialist trade beyond the largest platforms, for example at MyWindPowerSystems or at wind-turbine.com. Compared to solar systems, this is of course somewhat more expensive.

Treasure trove: secondary use by the state

It is not an insider tip, but what can be found in the administration's e-bay goes beyond standard items. Anyone who has an urgent need for intensive care stretchers, tractors, fire-fighting and gritting vehicles, office furniture, dog crates or has always wanted to buy an electrically powered hearse, such as the one currently being sold by the city of Münster, will find what they are looking for at the government auction Zoll-Auktion.de.

But sometimes you can also find things that have been seized. Pinball machines or tin soldiers, for example. Or goods for which import duty was simply not paid - such as pallets of Paw Patrol toys. Discarded telephones, cameras and drones are also perennial favorites - as is high-proof liquor, usually confiscated by customs. The downside is that the majority of the offers are only intended for collectors, so a local search is often recommended.

Other platforms not mentioned

This issue of Missing Links would not be complete without mentioning that there are a whole host of specialist platforms that are deliberately not linked here - the used slip trade would be one of the more harmless examples.

For a while, it seemed as if many of the platforms mentioned here were being completely swallowed up by a few large providers – above all the marketplaces of Amazon, AliBaba and the like. But in fact, this type of offering still seems to be booming. However, in the case of machine platforms, for example, we can see how the world is changing and how Chinese providers are becoming ever stronger. The long tail of interests, the internet has made it – like so many other things – more visible.

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