they are going up. you can still get some dirty beat up ones that you may have to replace parts on at half the price on these. the ones i got are basically new and clean, with extra set orings for future replacement
Bought 8 used ball lock kegs from MoreBeer. I kept 1 and sent the rest back. Total junk. Bad thing was I had to pay the shipping to Cali. Ended up buying some new kegs and love them, but man they are pricey.
I paid $20.00 + shipping for two soda kegs in 1993. Those kegs were in much better condition than what one finds on the used market today. Nice pin-lock kegs were dirt cheap in the early nineties because Coca Cola was migrating their customer base over to the bag-in-box system.
If you can wait out for sales at AiH, there’s really no reason at all to be messing around with used kegs. Their sale prices on new kegs are incredible. And it seems like they run their sales every few months.
Even better (for me at least) is that they carry the smaller 2.5 gallon kegs and have great sales on that size as well.
AiH was selling 3 gallon cornys for ~$30 earlier in the year. They were uncleaned and “ugly” but the two I bought are in really good shape cosmetically and just need a good clean inside and out.
I bought a couple 5 gallon cornys from cornykeg.com a few years ago and they are in good shape and came well cleaned.
The AiN new kegs are made in China. They worked with the manufacturer to get them to a high quality point , and I must say the kegs look fantastic in the store. The top and bottom rubber parts look superb. The welds are as good as in the Old US made ones. The SS meets 304 specs from a test sheet they had a local lab do (saw the results somewhere).
If I decide to buy some more kegs, I will go new. Must. Resist. Urge. To Buy.