Its not hard to find a good deck. Keep in mind the devices are 40 and more years old. Cleaning and replacing belts are neccessary, also demagnetizing and calibration. There are tons of advisories and videos about that on the net. Also a lot of service manuals are still available. I got 4 usable decks here, bought on ebay for some bucks. Sure, some models are overpriced or rare, like the Nakamichi Dragon which is a ultra high end model that brings no trade-off to modern made music on such cassettes. Other models are expensive because there are collectors like me that want to complete their rack with a deck or record player. If you got a deck, forget about purchasing newly made cassettes, i bought some of them, all crap. The reason behind is that the materials gotten rare and industry tried to replace it. I buy old TDK SA90 or so on the flea market. Those folks survive years of glovebox heat and rucksack-storage of teenagers. And dont buy them on ebay, the same overpriced bingo-bongo there.