Bernina Artista 180
I have a 180 that I bought new in 95 or 96. I've always liked that machine. Its my main machine for all my sewing except piecing and FMQ on larger quilts. I live in fear it will die on me so I've been looking for another one as a back up for a year or so now. Yesterday I went to an estate sale and they had 2! I tried them both out and this one was the older one, but it seemed to work perfectly. The other one was from 2000 but when I tried to use it the feed dogs were dropped and seemed to be stuck there. I've never dealt with that and couldn't get the throat plate off to see what was going on so I decided to go with the older one. I didn't have a chance to play with it yesterday, but I'm going to test it some more today. I'm really excited about finally finding one and at a very reasonable price.
I was a bit upset with the estate sale people. I told the lady that the other machine didn't actually sew as she was saying it did, but she ignored me and continued to tell people that the machines worked fine. They had tested them. Made me roll my eyes. They probably turned them on and the needle went up and down and they thought "Oh, it works fine". When I was ready to check out, I saw that a guy had bought that machine and was packing it up. I felt bad that he was thinking he bought a machine that worked, except that it didn't.