Hi Greg -
Your reply sparks an interesting debate and another set of questions from me.

• Used vs. New
• Old Technology vs. New Technology

This first topic is extremely sensitive and so I will precursor the following with the disclaimer that I'm really not trying to offend anybody so readers please do not take this personally....
I grew up in a very tiny farming community of ~1500 in northern Michigan. T'was one of these towns where everyone knew everybody right down to what one had for dinner every night practically. Anybody committing any form of dishonesty and the news spread like wildfire even if there were no substantiated facts. In that era and in that town if a fellow modeler offered to sell you a "used" engine you could certainly trust them that it was a worthy purchase and the engine was good. That was long before RCU and long before EBay.
Unfortunately, in this day and age when somebody tries to sell a used engine to me I never know who or what to believe anymore. I once had a very trusted LHS try to sell me what they claimed was a brand new engine. They pulled it out of their showcase in all of its glory w/ the box & paperwork. Everything was still wrapped in plastic. Almost immediately, though, I noticed through the plastic wrapping that the throttle linkages looked rusty. The LHS owner attempted to explain that this was normal. Then I noticed that the engine mounts had clear signs of bolt marks. With that the LHS owner confessed that, "Alright, the engine was sold to me by a friend and he claimed that the engine was mounted in one of his planes, but never run. So I am selling it as brand new."
Then I looked into the exhaust port and could clearly see that there was black oil residue and scoring on the piston. The LHS owner promptly defended this by saying, "Okay, okay, the fellow may have run the engine once or twice, but you can see it's in perfect condition."
Another time, I had a guy sell me a NIB engine from an online auction. I get it and find that the crankcase is cracked.

Long story short, who do you trust anymore? And, what exactly does "Used but in Near Perfect Condition" Or "Used, Mint Condition" or "Used, Excellent Condition" truly mean w/o having the engine professionally checked out? So to answer your question, yes I guess I was really looking for a brand new engine even if that means NOS.

That brings up the second topic: New Technology vs. Old Technology.

In the 70s and 80s when I was getting into the hobby, there were 2 names in town: K&B and ENYA. The debate on these was just as fierce as that w/ cars; American vs. Japanese. Then a couple of the guys got hold of Super Tigre engines and these became the absolute rage. I like all three and currently have an ST .61 in my SIG King Kobra. My very first engine was an ENYA .09, which I still have. The ENYA's have always seemed to run silky smooth for me, and have been very reliable. Now, though, even though ENYA still makes engines they are hard to come by except seeing them regularly pop up on EBay or RCU.
My question, though, is that I've heard and read tons in the forums from guys that absolutely swear up-n-down that the older engines from Super Tigre and OS are far superior than the newer ones. On the converse, I've heard and read equally as much in the opposite direction that the newer engines are better. As I mentioned before, the OS 61 FX I have is just a dud; however, the newer OS engines seem to be all of the rage. The new OS 4-stroke Alphas seemingly look, sound, and perform very well and the reviews I read are stellar....are they truly? The older ST round head engines are seemingly very excellent; today's ST engines sell for very minimal prices everywhere I look and nobody seems to want them anymore.

What is fact vs. fiction?

Tom