Xpantastic!

In 1998 or so, I bought my Xpander sight unseen from a guy in Southern
California. I was living in San Jose at the time, about 6 hours away
by car.
(someone gave me a tip and I followed up on it).
I called the guy, asked him lots of questions. I really took a chance
buying something as expensive as this blindly from an "unknown"
person.

He packed and shipped it, while I was sweating blood hoping it would
arrive. When the box came I started unpacking it, when I heard some
rattling inside.
I stopped there, and called UPS to file a claim. I also called the
owner to let him know what happened.

After opening the box, I opened the Xpander slowly. The transformer
bolts were loose and the transformer had about 1+ inch or so of
vertical travel.
Fortunately the only components that were broken were a cheap OpAmp,
diode and resistor. All of which I think are for the cassette zero
crossing detector, so nothing really critical, but still it was an
unerving experience.
I took the Xpander to someone in San Francisco and he fixed it
relatively cheaply.

I am lucky the shock of the transformer bouncing didn't damage the
VFD's or crack the circuit boards.

Well, I have had this baby about 10 years, and it's been in good shape.