Sounds like your really good deal may not have been such a good deal. Sometimes used planesa are a good deal, usually not. I find that even when I buy a ready to fly plane, the guy who built it doesn't do things the way I would have done it & I wind up spending as much as the cost of the plane (or more) converting it over to the way I would have done it. Not that what he did was neccessarily wrong, just not the way I would have done it.

Consequently, I only buy new now. Then too, as you stated, the stuff that was new on the market not all that long ago just doesn't compare to the stuff that is available today.