Thanks again Dean. I'll get in touch with him this weekend.
I've tried some of the newer Diawas, Shimanos, and such. Most seem to work okay but I just don't like them. It's like they are too light weight or something. I use two 5000's on my plug rods. I leave them on the ugly old one piece Fenwick 83C's I built in another incarnation. They only get out of the boat to get cleaned a few times a year so they look pretty ratty but the drags are still smooth as silk and they've each caught hundreds of fish.
I don't know about this secondary market business. Fishing with someone else's tackle sounds rather like wearing someone else's underwear to me. Kinda creeps me out. I'm probably being to sensitive but the newest reel I currently fish with is a near perfect Shimano 251 that I've had since they first came out.