I haven't had especially bad luck with this sort of thing.

Though, one time that I remember was a bag from Value Village that had in it, among other things, what appeared to be a boxed Thermaltake Orb s462/370 HSF. Got it home and opened to find some generic other s462 cooler, which was super dusty and smelled really bad, and had old thermal paste all over it and the inside of the box. It went in the bin.

I bought a flight simulator on fleabay. A big box edition. The CD/jewel case/manual were missing. Instead the box contained a book about airliners. 😐

Errius wrote:

I bought a flight simulator on fleabay. A big box edition. The CD/jewel case/manual were missing. Instead the box contained a book about airliners. 😐

Sux, you wonder if that was a deliberate troll.

I remember when I first started going to thrift stores I found a Tekram SCSI controller box. Had a quick look inside, cables, manuals, software, an opaque anti-static bag holding an expansion card... alright, I'm sold. I didn't have a need for a SCSI controller at the time so I put it in storage immediately after getting the thing home. Fast forward to the time when I had a use for the card, I opened that bag and... it was one of those 'barebones' SCSI adapters that came with flatbed scanners. Damn. 😵

Nowadays any piece of new-ish hardware I come across at flea markets and such is pretty much guaranteed to be grossly incomplete. Local people simply don't care at all for their stuff.

I have some stories on hand for this subject.

Back in 2013, I bought a copy of The Powerpuff Girls movie on VHS at Value Village, when I opened up the case I found a Dead Birds VHS tape instead. What a disappointment because I was looking to expand our VHS tape collection with some family films for me and my 6 (now 10) year old brother to watch, lesson learned: Always open up the case of a DVD or VHS tape while you're in the store to make sure it's the movie you're looking for.

Just a year afterwards, I bought a copy of Windows For Workgroups 3.11 on eBay, which was supposedly complete with the manuals and disks. When it arrived I got around to opening up the box to discover that all that was inside were the manuals and paperwork, no disks were included 😢. Oh well, I've found the disk images elsewhere *cough*abandonware sites*cough*.

Now for the most recent disappointment: Just last year I found a lot of Disney VHS tapes on our local Buy Nothing (a Facebook group that specializes in gifting freebies), the lot included a copy of the 1991 Black Diamond printing of Dumbo which I really was hoping was legit because those things can be worth tons of money these days (depending on condition I guess), unfortunately the case contained a VHS tape of an off-air recording of Dumbo from an ABC station in Southern California. At least it was the same movie even though it's not a genuine Disney copy.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Now for the most recent disappointment: Just last year I found a lot of Disney VHS tapes on our local Buy Nothing (a Facebook group that specializes in gifting freebies), the lot included a copy of the 1991 Black Diamond printing of Dumbo which I really was hoping was legit because those things can be worth tons of money these days (depending on condition I guess), unfortunately the case contained a VHS tape of an off-air recording of Dumbo from an ABC station in Southern California. At least it was the same movie even though it's not a genuine Disney copy.

Bah, yeah at least it was "close" 😁

Those Black Diamond editions though, I've got the same one as the "infamous" $25,000 Buy it Now Aladdin (Gone now but several in the 10s of thousands) and any time I see something I'm interested in, but the seller shows me a riiiiiiiiiiiidiculous BIN listing price on eBay, to justify his asking price, I offer them a straight swap for that... nobody taken me up on it.

Charity shop - Box for Philips DVD-RW (I was looking forward to a Philips/Benq that's good for disc scanning)
Actually contained a Liteon 1635S - thankfully also an effective drive for in depth disc testing.

And one which was my own fault, in my local CeX, asked bout the DVD-RW drives, and mentioned the names that were more interesting....
The guy found me a Philips/Benq DVD8881 - and that turns out not to be one of the classic drives, and NOT a good scanning drive.

Anyway, my main system now carries a Samsung SH-223L and the 1635S as a scanning drive - first one I've had that can do advanced scans in CDspeed, so not too disappointed

Bought a new game soundtrack CD that was factory-sealed (not shrink-wrapped).
Arrived new and complete. Except it was missing the actual CD. Never seen anything like that. Even the seller was baffled.

I really don't buy what I can't inspect anymore. I'm more than familiar with the old goodwill box with the old card the person upgraded from in it 😜.

I did recently take a risk on a boxed creative blaster 8x cd-rom from the goodwill website.. which unfortunately won't power on (looking into that). To my surprise though, instead of the generic controller card that came with the card, there was a virtually brand new 1994 dated aztech sound galaxy basic 16.. Not the best card but it works! So sometimes luck happens in those little magic boxes!

If it's cheap enough, I look for empty boxes for the items I have 😀

However, I did come pretty close to buying a "bad" box. Saw an Asus Maximus Formula (original). Pulled out the motherboard and all the heatsinks (ICH/MCH/VRM) were missing. 😕

Found a boxed Boca 8bit ISA serial/parallel card at a thrift store, opened it and someone stole the card. 😠

Bought a boxed 40x CDROM from a flea market and found a Mitsumi 4x drive in it which sounded like it was opening the portal to hell when it loaded the tray.

Was given a seemingly boxed Maxtor 6gb hard drive compete with manuals l, 3.5 to 5.25 mounting kit and EZ-Drive on a floppy, found a Seagate Medalist 2gb drive in the ESD bag. It was dead too, didn't get detected in any of the PCs I tried it in.

Flee market, PQ1 box had an electric toothbrush in it. 🤣

I've never bought an empty box but I could imagine my response if it was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yXTzj_Acos

Wile I never bought anything with a different item being in the retail box.
I have bought a number of things online only to revive an empty shipping box.

I bought two 604 cpu's and received an empty box and a voodoo 2 pass-through cable and laptop hdd witch came in a empty bubble mailers.
There are a lot more, but I don't recall them all.

Yah, I had a "not what I paid for" incident out of eBay too, supposed to be a good and working Tualatin, "actual item" pics showed good, it was something like $5 and $25 shipping.... I assumed the shipping would be fast, nope, regular mail, $5 in a bubble mailer, now the CPU was well wrapped, snugged up in some foam with a loop of cardboard around, mailer was pristine, cardboard was unmarked, but the CPU had Every. Single. Pin. mashed completely flat, apart from the dozen or so that were missing, looked like it had been driven over, BEFORE it went into the packaging, the missing pins weren't to be seen rattling around in the packaging either, it wasn't embedded in the AS foam either like you'd expect if something put enough pressure on it to turn it into an expensive staple.... so yeah, I got my $5 item cost back... I wanted to flame them so bad with negative feedback, but it was obvious they were really retaliatory with that, shameless lies quite likely, so just had to suck it up.

When I am shopping at thrift stores and am looking at something that is boxed, I make sure to open it up and verify the contents before buying. I don't care if it is taped shut and they say not to open the box, I open it anyway.

Absolutely unacceptable not to be able to especially when everything is non-returnable.

Usually everything is there, but sometimes when looking at board games some pieces are missing.

As for eBay. If I get something that is not as described, I will contact the seller first and if they are not cooperative, then I open up a case. Completely inexcusable to sell stuff as new or as tested and then when it is received it is either very obviously used or DOA.. or something different.

BitWrangler wrote:

but the CPU had Every. Single. Pin. mashed completely flat, apart from the dozen or so that were missing, looked like it had been driven over, BEFORE it went into the packaging, the missing pins weren't to be seen rattling around in the packaging either, it wasn't embedded in the AS foam either like you'd expect if something put enough pressure on it to turn it into an expensive staple....

When in doubt that something like this may happen (spider-sense?), I often film myself unboxing the item to have proof.

I found Sim Safari at a thrift store and when I picked it up, it had some weight to it. Figuring it was complete or close enough I didn't bother checking it until I brought it home. Turns out I purchased the box for Sim Safari and a whole bunch of manuals for gameboy games and PC games.

In the 90s there was a store called Toy Land. They had a mix of new toys and ones from the previous decade like Ultraman, Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad, Computer Warriors, Centurions, Sectaurs, or Sky Commanders. They also had one isle for damaged packaging. I had bought an Air Raiders vehicle from that isle. The box wasn't empty but what it did contain was just the shell of the vehicle.

For a "not what I paid for" incident out of eBay see this thread