Buzz254,
As you know there are already several people buying, refurbishing and reselling these generators online, plus it seems many more that sell through more traditional offline methods. Pricing is often the problem, I was looking at the web site for one online reseller of "refurbished" MEP-002a the other day and saw that their price was right at 10 times more than I paid for my MEP-002a from GL a few weeks ago. Sure mine had a few issues (bad transistor in the AVR and a couple of gauges that need to be replaced, plus maybe a problem with the fuel tank float), but even buying from the common surplus parts dealers at their prices these could easily be fixed for the $3000+ price difference.
The problem is when you look at it from a business venture standpoint that $3500 MEP-002a starts to make sense once you consider $400-$800 typical GL price, add another $200 -$250 freight (assuming multi unit freight discounts, truck freight is not cheap), a certain number of the units being devoted to parts units, labor time getting these running as many will have more serious issues than the one i bought, then leave a little room for profit. Cost of original style parts is likely a prime killer of this sort of venture, as certainly original style parts are both common failure items and prohibitively expensive to replace with new parts. For example the frequency transducer for the frequency gauge, a several hundred dollar part if you can find one most of the time, however by comparison made in china digital LED combination frequency/voltage gauges sell on ebay for $20 new. This of course leads to the thought of buying them, resell some in original style, and some retrofitted with digital meters, auto start, etc. which may be a practical option, and the right choice for some buyers.
Ike