Good article Al! Used gear really can be the ticket as there's ALWAYS someone out there willing to dump their perfectly good equipment just to have the latest and greatest. One thing I would add is all of the companies usually have their own refurbished stores where you can get refurbished gear at a cheaper price. Sometimes these are even the store display models that get sent back, put through a rigorous check where they clean and replace any broken parts and they get the full once over like any warranty or other repair would if the consumer sent their camera in, and then sell them. Great place to go for gear if you don't want to chance a private auction but don't want to buy new. You can find everything refurbished from camera bodies, to lenses, to flashes. Gear on these go fast though as they don't always keep a steady stock of this stuff. Can't tell you how many times I've almost pulled the trigger on a new lens from Canon Refurb only to refresh the page and see it out of stock. And sometimes they even have discounts ontop of the markdown already.
Refurb products (at least from Canon) come with selected accessories like you would find in a new camera, something that might be missing from a private seller, as well as a 1 year Canon warranty. Here are links to Canon's and Nikon's. I'm sure Sony, Pentax, etc all have similar.
http://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/ca...al-slr-cameras
http://shop.usa.canon.com/shop/en/ca...rbished-lenses
http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Sto...d-Cameras.page
Just something else to think about, but I agree theres no harm checking into used gear!!