Used Gym Equipment – The Best Tips and Tricks For Your Home Gym In 2024
Last updated on April 5th, 2024 at 10:07 am
I’m a big fan of the used market. I’ve bought keyboards and computers, photography equipment, kids toys, furniture, and more. It all started however, with buying used gym equipment. I’ve bought bars, benches, racks, plates, collars, and so much more. Literal thousands of dollars of used equipment over the 10+ years of my used equipment deals. In fact, my very first gym purchases were used equipment.
Used equipment can save you cash, but you need to know what you are getting yourself into.
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Used Gym Equipment – Back In The Day
When I first started my home gym, it was almost a given that you would buy your plates second hand. These plates went for $.50/lb, every single day of the week. So when I originally wrote this article back in 2016, the world was a little different. COVID hit and the entire home gym scene went nuts, and the used market became a place where people charged an arm and a leg for a rusty bar they found in the trash… and people bought it! Happily!
We also didn’t have as many options for quality equipment. Companies like Rep Fitness were only doing Crossfit stuff, Rogue was basically the only affordable American Made option on the market, and there was next to no small manufacturers making stuff from their garages. Oh, and Craigslist was the bees knees and Marketplace didn’t exist.
So I’ve taken my original article and updated it for a post-COVID world. I’ve also added some fun stories from my own used gym equipment adventures along the way,
Note – My original article caught the attention of Peter Keller from Fringe Sport. He published it on their blog, which you can check out here.
Know Your Intent
This is basically the same thing I say every time, but know what your goal is. Are you in it for deals on equipment to build your gym? Or are you a flipper, trying to make cash? Picking up and selling equipment to fund your next purchase? Maybe all of the above?
If you are looking for a piece for your own gym, things look different. A good deal on a bar you plan to keep just needs to be in a range you are comfortable paying. Take a $300 barbell. A good deal on one you want to keep might be $200.
Even on sale, that bar isn’t likely to go for less than $250. So $200 is a great price. But a good deal on a bar you plan to sell might need to be $150. That lets you list it for $200, give someone a good deal, while you pocket $50.
My Story – Know Your Intent
I have no intent on owning a Titan rack. But when one popped up around the corner from me for 25% of the retail price, I jumped on it. The family was moving and had already left. The daughter was selling off the remaining pieces that didn’t fit in the truck. I tore it down, took it home, and sold it later that same day for close to double what I paid. I made about $250 in an afternoon for what amounted to about 2 hours of work. I’ll take it.
Moral of The Story – Know Your Intent
I have done well buying large deals of used gym equipment, flipping 80+% of it, and keeping the bar or plates or bench that I wanted. This allowed me to recoup or even make money off the deal, and get that one item I wanted for free. I’ve bought stuff with the intent entirely to flip. And I’ve definitely bought a lot with the intent to keep. So you can bob and weave on your goals, but know what it is for each purchase.
Know Your Limits
Once we know what we want to accomplish, we need to swallow a dose of reality. I’d love to be able to buy every good used gym equipment deal on the market and wait for the right buyer to make a deal to maximize my profits and make a ton of money. In reality I have maybe a few thousand bucks I can play with for inventory, and I have my shed and small parts of my garage I can use for storage. So …
How much cash do you have to work with?
More money to work with, means more opportunities. It also means you can buy bigger bulk deals, which are often the REAL winners. People looking to offload an entire garage gym for a quick move out of state. You’ll need a lot of cash, but you can often get an entire gym for half off.
How much space do you have?
You’ll need room to fit possible “leftovers” while flipping equipment. If you REALLY want that bench, but it comes with 400lbs of plates, a rack, and a bar you don’t want, can you grab the entire thing and shove some in the corner? Smaller items are easier to store and put away. I can probably fit 10 barbells in random nooks and crannies of my gym. But a leg curl machine? A power rack? Some items take up tons of space and just aren’t realistic for a flip.
How far are you willing to drive for a deal?
You can set your radius on Marketplace to help you limit your range. The wider the more opportunities, but especially as gas prices go up, longer drives eat into your deals. And remember, you need to drive something that can fit the entirety of your pick up. Many are willing to do overnight trips for deals. I tend to stick to about an hour of drive time, round trip.
Value
What do you value as a “deal”? Make sure to factor in your time into these decisions. If you have a family, another job, or other opportunities to make money, driving 4 hours to grab a bar that will save you $50 is probably not a great decision.
What tools do you have or are willing to buy? Used equipment can be pretty beat up and you might need to refurbish some plates. Cleaning bars and equipment means brushes, paint, eye and hand protection, and more. You’ll also need some wrenches and sockets, maybe an Impact Wrench to speed it up.
Think about the weather as well. If you have an open bed truck, it’ll fit more, but rain on your brand new bars is not fun. Be ready to haul hundreds of pounds of dirty equipment into the back of whatever vehicle you own.
You almost might need an extra hand. I’ve had used pickups where people helped break down the equipment, lent their tools, even loaded it into my car with me. I’ve had pick-ups where I bought thousands of pounds of equipment from injured people or old ladies.
My Story – Know Your Limits
I love telling this story, so you might have seen it before. It showed up in my interview with Rob at VintageWeightsPGH. It is about my Vintage Plates. The furthest used pick-up I’ve ever done.
My wife took a road trip down to her parents in Southern California to help take care of her mom after a surgery. I was messing around on Craigslist and randomly saw an ad down there that had one picture of some cellophane wrapped plates stacked in a pallet. The ad was $.65/lb and they said they had a few thousand plates.
I knew what they were when I saw them, Vintage California made plates. Extra cool cause they were made in Northern California in the 80s… just like me! I mentioned it to my wife, and she said “if you want them, I’ll get them”. On the night before she left, her and her brother went to the storage facility and bought the plates. They dug through them to find as many matching as possible, and came away with the numbers I wanted.
Love
She drove them all the way back from Southern California for me. I spent months cleaning them up, painting them, and lettering them. They were a true labor of love from the beginning to the end. Still my favorite piece in the entire gym, because not only do I have a set of REALLY cool vintage plates that are hand painted and custom to ME. They come with a backstory proving just how much my wife loves me.
With the number of Memes floating around about husbands having to hide their newest barbell purchase from their wife… My wife bought over 800lbs of dirty plates, put them in her new car, drove them over 400 miles, and helped me unload them.
Moral Of The Story – Know Your Limits
Picking things up used isn’t exactly free. And the more you do it, the more requirements you have around tools, space, and budget. it can take an INSANE amount of time to clean up a set of dirty plates. So know your limits so you don’t make some bad decisions and end up with equipment you can’t use or sell.
Know Your Market
Some markets are BUMPING with new stuff regularly. You can find good deals, high quality equipment, and no matter what you have it sells relatively fast. You are probably going to be able to be a bit pickier and wait for the deal you want in this kind of market. My market is like this. I have the luxury of reaching Sacramento areas for the population size, but also digging into quite a few suburb and rural areas. I’m right off two major highways, so within an hour drive time I can hit an absurd amount of areas.
Some markets are not so good. Some areas are too rural. There is just not a lot of people, so the number who own and sell gym equipment is minimal. Sorry, you might need to buy brand new. If you are lucky enough to have a decent market, here are some tips.
Resale Value
Factor in resale value of everything. Buying a Rogue rack, though more expensive, typically resells for 80%+ used. Buy the exact same Titan rack, and it’ll sell for 50% used. Plates that are dirty and rusty sell for less than plates that have been cleaned up. Urethane dumbbells are worth more than rubber hex, but rubber hex might be easier to sell.
Every market has different items that move well. Even a few hours separation could mean the difference between an item sitting for months, or moving the first day. Cheap equipment can sometimes be a really easy flip in some markets. I’ve sold pieces that I would never use in my own space, the same day, for double what I thought it was worth. Sometimes people want to grab something for their teenage brother who weighs 75lbs.
New Years resolutioners are a gold mine. Check in from February – April or so, and get ready to grab stuff at a steal.
My Story – Know Your Market
Years ago I spotted a set of HOIST Adjustable Dumbbells for sale. This was the predecessor to the Ironmaster Adjustable Dumbbells. A lady had them listed on OfferUp, marked as Gym Weights, for $100. It was out in the middle of legit nowhere, but I went and grabbed them. They were close to a decade old, and not a single scratch, dent, or chip to be seen. The lady said they hadn’t moved in years. Yeah, I could tell.
I took them home, listed them for $400, and they were sold the very next day. I made $300 in a day, because I went just outside of my local market, and brought something back. These were sitting for months, and I sold them for 4x the price in a day.
Moral Of The Story – Know Your Market
Every market is drastically different. Southern California had multiple deadlift bars for sale for close to a year when I had none. I eventually bought one, and then a used one showed up around the corner a few weeks later. I have friends in San Jose who used to regularly drive up to Sacramento to grab equipment, and turn around and sell it for more down there. We are talking a couple of hours of drive time, being the difference between a few hundred bucks and a sale vs a product sitting for weeks.
So you NEED to understand your market, especially if you plan to flip equipment. And you need to understand the markets around you, what sells, what doesn’t, and where the good deals come from.
Know Your Used Gym Equipment
Not all equipment is created equal. Plates, bars, benches, racks, and everything else comes in different levels of quality, and obviously come at different price tags. As mentioned, if you are looking to keep the items for yourself, you want to find the BEST equipment you can at the lowest price. If you are aiming to flip equipment, you need to know your market. High end benches are awesome, but charging $800 for a bench when a brand new one from REP Fitness can cost $300, might not fly.
Weights
For plates, you can learn to recognize the lettering styles of the more “quality” brands. Choosing a higher quality plate means more accuracy, tighter hole tolerances, and often better aesthetics. Now, cheap plates CAN be fine. But I’ve handled some that were so poorly machined they didn’t fit on a bar. I’ve weighed some that were 5+lbs lighter than their stated weight. I’ve seen weights crack.
If you are purely flipping plates, take notice of the condition they are in. You can always clean up plates, but that costs you time and money. So they better be VERY cheap on the used market to warrant that investment for a flip. Basically, clean Ivankos are a better deal at $.75/lb than dirty WalMart plates for $.50/lb.
Cleaning plates is easy. Clean them up, hose them down, let them dry, paint them, use them. As long as the plates aren’t pitted, meaning they have large pieces that have been eaten away by the rust, you are solid.
And if you get into Vintage Equipment, which can be VERY lucrative, you’ll want to be able to recognize the old school plates like York, Paramount, Jackson, and others. There is an insane assortment of old school stuff. Some is fairly common and recognizable after some research, and some is damn near impossible without the most hawk eye approach.
Bars
Similar concept for bars, you want to start recognizing the ends caps of better bars. For instance, MOST bars with a hex bolt end cap, unless older, tend to be the poorer quality bars. Bars that are chrome plated are typically cheaper. Bars without any distinct markings or branding, are typically cheaper. This matters because you can get a fairly decent bar from Rogue for under $300, or even the budget Bells of Steel bar for $200. At that point, it becomes pretty difficult to recommend you buy a dirty crappy used bar for $100. And especially for a flip, you need to be getting those cheapo bars for next to nothing.
If you find a dirty bar, most rust is going to be surface rust. This means the metal simply needs some love and attention with some brushes and 3n1 Oil. I’ve cleaned up a few bars with very good success.
Again with vintage equipment, bars can be VERY difficult to identify. Small changes in length, knurling pattern, end cap assembly, and more can mean the bar is worthless, or priceless.
Machines & Other Stuff
No difference here, you need to be able to sort through the crap. Learn to recognize better brand names, like Parabody, Hammer Strength, Rogue, York, Ivanko, Hampton, etc. Again, remember that there is a difference between an item you plan to keep, and an item you plan to flip. Grab an Eleiko Power Bar, that originally costs $1200, for $1000, and thats a good deal to keep. But try and flip that, and you’ll be in trouble. As I mentioned before, you likely don’t have a ton of room to store machines to flip. So a great deal on a leg press might need to be left for someone else.
Find a dirty, rusty machine, rack, or other big item? This is a bit of a grey area. Again, surface rust is no big deal as long as you can clean it out, oil/paint, and keep it clean/dry going forward. But I’d personally be wary of a rack that was left outside long term and you can’t get INSIDE the rack to clean it. Same goes with a bench or any other equipment that you are putting a lot of trust into to support your weight + a few hundred pounds. Use your best judgement here.
Machines TEND to not be worth much from a vintage stance. There are a few exceptions I’ve seen, but they are SUPER uncommon. So stick to old plates, bars, and dumbbells.
Additional Notes
If you see something that rarely shows up, grab it. A set of monolift attachments was for sale in my area, and for some stupid reason I didn’t grab them. Guess what I never saw again and ended up buying new?
If you buy it new, it’ll show up on Craigslist tomorrow. I bought my SSB and one showed up within two months. I bought my Tibia Machine, the same exact model showed up two weeks later. I’ve missed saving quite a bit of money by these random happenings. Just remember, you can’t kick yourself for buying new, because if you didn’t buy it, it wouldn’t have been listed.
My Story – Know Your Used Gym Equipment
I will often check the local used gym equipment market when we travel out of town. We drove up north about 1.5 hours from where we live, to where my wife and I went to school. I checked before hand and found a guy selling some plates. They had been listed for months, were all rusted, and the picture looked to be from a scrap yard. I message him, set up a time to drop in, and we head off.
My wife and I have a good day out of town, then we swing bye and go for the plates. I had my eyes on some Deep Dish York plates. We get there and the guy is about our age, super friendly, and his entire backyard is what I thought was the scrap yard. He begins to walk us back and then abruptly stops, looks at my wife, and says “And here are the kittens”. He points at a new litter of kittens, as if my wife wasn’t interested in the weights but would be happier playing with cats (not too far off, but felt odd).
We continued towards the weights, where he had a stack of DIY stuff, a few plates, and that was it. Most of what I wanted, including the Yorks, was gone. Apparently he had been out of town for awhile and his wife sold most of it for less money than he wanted to sell it for. We talked for a bit, found out we had a mutual friend from school, I learned some funny stories about said friend, and I bought the plates he had. We returned home, I cleaned them up, listed them, and sold them for enough to cover our gas, food, and the entire day trip.
Moral Of The Story – Know Your Used Gym Equipment
Whether you are hunting for vintage gold, the next piece in your gym, or a quality flip, it is going to take a keen eye. Buy just any used gym equipment and you are quickly going to regret it. If you can recognize good equipment by means of names, knurling, end caps, markings, and more, you are a huge step ahead of everyone else. When in doubt, ask for additional pictures, and clarify what they have. No sense in driving hours to get something you didn’t want.
Finding A Deal
Searching for equipment has always been weird. You’d think it would be straight forward, which sometimes it is, but a lot of the times it isn’t. Go to your marketplace right now and try multiple search terms, even misspelling terms. I’ve seen Rogue and Rouge, Dumbbell and Dumbell, all bring up different results. Gym Equipment, Weights, Free Weights, Weight Plates, Olympic, Barbell, Bench, Squat, you name it.
I used to keep a long list of search terms handy to run through each day. Misspellings, different variations of equipment names, company names, and more. There are specific categories for certain types of equipment which can certainly help hone down the search. But it is not like Marketplace knows the difference between a Rogue Barbell and a shower curtain rod. So you might be better off leaving those categories unchecked.
Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp have been my go to platforms for the past several years. Early on it was Craigslist all the way, but Marketplace really seems to have taken the used gym equipment game away from Craigslist.
Back when I used Craigslist regularly, the site Search Tempest was a winner. Search Tempest sometimes gave me deals that Craigslist seemed to think was “out of my area”. They now include Facebook Marketplace in their search which is awesome. I haven’t used it recently myself, but worth a mention none the less.
OfferUp is its own app. My experience is that it has LESS stuff, but can oftentimes produce better deals. Some of the best savings I’ve gotten on used gym equipment, photography stuff, bikes, and more, were from OfferUp. I’m not sure why, maybe it isn’t used as often so people are open to deals?
Haggle
This one is up to you, but I typically go by a few rules. If it is already a fantastic deal, I don’t even bother. I got about $2500 worth of clean, no rust or dust, equipment for about $600. I didn’t even make an attempt to barter and potentially lose the deal.
If the ad has been up for awhile, this is when I typically barter. I found a $650 ad for “some plates, a bar, and a bench”. The bench was old and mostly useless, but after talking with the guy for two days, we landed on $250. It was 700lbs of 80s Vintage Olympic Plates, 150lbs of standard, about 50lbs of random hex dumbbells, and an old 80s vintage bar that I cleaned up. I probably made close to $500 on that deal.
My Story – Finding A Deal
One of the weirdest stories I have for the used market is when I bought my Hundos (two stories). The first set was in a guys backyard. He had a full semi truck back there. We hopped up and into it, he had old broken TVs and other nonsense, and then a huge pair of like 200lb dumbbells, and a pair of 100lb plates. EVERYTHING was covered in chicken poop. Everything.
My second set of Hundos was a mom selling her sons gym equipment cause he moved away for college. The ad was a really bad picture of some barely distinguishable plates. He had a pair of Ivanko 100s, and then a bunch of DIY and concrete plates. I go to look and she tells me “I just found the matching weight to that other one”, talking about the Ivankos. I bought it all, and sold the scrap to my local Play It Again Sports to cover the cost of everything. She messaged me two days later trying to get me to buy more concrete plates.
Moral Of The Story – Finding a Deal
If you are serious about grabbing a deal, you need to think outside the box a little. You also need to apply the same rigor to searching, that you would to anything else. Do it regularly, do is consistently, and put the time in.
Weekends are the most bang for your buck search times. I normally check at lunch during the week, and then in the mornings on weekends. People post early to get their day started and clear out the space. And they often kick start weekend clean up projects early on Saturdays. Make sure to hop on it right out the gate.
Last Words On Used Gym Equipment
Not an all encompassing How-To, by any means. You could write an entire book on vintage equipment alone, and Efren did just that. But it tends to be the way I’ve found good deals, both to keep, to flip, and to piece out. So far, I’ve managed to add equipment to my gym while helping cover the costs over the years. Flips have allowed me to buy new without touching my savings. I’ve had the opportunity to try a ton of equipment on a bargain price, and then keep what I wanted and sell what I didn’t.
Others have managed to sell enough to cover the ENTIRE cost of their gym. That just isn’t realistic for me. Maybe some day, but I stopped tracking that long ago.
A note on safety… I typically meet in a nearby parking lot that is just full enough to ward off anyone doing weird shit, but clear enough that its not hard to find each other. A busy grocery store parking lot is hard to find the right “red car”, and an empty lot allows someone who has some ideas to try and make them happen.
Good To Me
The used gym equipment scene has been good to me. The horror stories of people getting stabbed or stuff stolen, dealing with assholes, etc. I’ve been lucky. I’ve had two people that were jerks that tried to screw me, a couple people who I was too nice to, and the rest were all awesome people trying to better themselves through some home gym action. I hope if you read this, you are able to put it to work.
Remember, you need to figure out your goal, determine what you are working with, do your research, and get ready to get your hands dirty and do a lot of searching. Oh, and I’m not done yet. So you better be faster than me!
Joe Gray
My name is Joe Gray - aka Gray Matter Lifting - and I've been lifting at home since 2013. In that time I've built a badass gym, deadlifted over 600lbs, helped grow r/Homegym to over 1 Million subscribers, created the Garage Gym Competition and written a ton of posts here on this site. I love the Garage Gym Community... If you do too, I hope you stick around.
