Tips for buying used machine from broker?

[SRT Mike]

Not looking to buy immediately, but I am curious what you folks suggest for buying a used lathe from a dealer or even direct from the owner.

I have a 2-axis lathe now but with the work I do, I would like more RPM's, faster rapids and spindle, a sub-spindle, and live tooling. A shop next to me has 2 Mori Seiki SL150's and they are very nice. They are both 1999 models and he paid around $90k for each of them, which included some live tooling holders, each with 2 chucks and also each came with a bar feeder. But when I look around, I see '00 model machines and the dealers are listing them for $130k or so.

I bought a mill from a broker a couple years back - I just told him to give me his bottom line price and I'd not haggle - I'd either buy or not buy at that price. He did, and I bought - it was pretty painless overall.

How much wiggle room do you guys think there is on most machine tools? 10%? 20%? 0%? For you guys who've sold machines, do you usually shoot high and expect to get X% less? If so, what is X? For those of you who've bought, how much did you get off the asking price?

Also, is there any sort of reference for machine tool values? It seems to me that 99% of the brokers dont list prices - they want you to call so they can put you in their database and bug you on an ongoing basis, and/or so they can give you the hard sell on the machine by phone. How do you guys determine a machines worth?