It's quite possible. I can give you a couple of my own examples, though. You have to know what you're buying, though.

My general-purpose device (MCU, PLD, PROM, EPROM, EEPROM, etc.) programmer (a Data-I/O Unisite) lists for ~$48,000US. I bought mine, through a bit of effort, for a net cost of $235 on eBay. What I had to do, of course, was to buy several, including the freight cost, and combine them into a satisfactorily equipped unit. Now, equipped as I have it, it would have cost considerably more, as a new unit, on the order of $55,000 but, after selling off the units I didn't need, on eBay, I had a net cost, including shipping, of about $235. I've done that sort of thing several times, for me and for others on various types of equipment and other goods.

My TEK 2465B, 4-channel 400 MHz analog oscilloscope, with microchannel-plate photomultiplier, which I bought after a burglary, in order to replace the instrument I bought at a company auction for ~$14000, cost about $1000 via eBay (about $100 more, actually, because, rather than having it shipped, I drove to the seller's location to pick it up in order to save time and also to examine it. I had rented a car in order to drive it for a while before buying one. That was well worth it, as I decided on a different model as a result.) I've used it with complete satisfaction for about 6 years. The price on various used equipment dealership websites was still upwards of $8000. You simply have to know what questions to ask before buying. That, BTW, applies to nearly anything, and not just test equipment, and not just on eBay, no matter where you buy.

Ive bought several pieces of very satisfactory TEK TM500 and TM5000 test equipment on eBay, for just a small portion of what they normally cost on the used equipment market, and at a small fraction of what it would cost to have a defective unit repaired, or even to repair one myself, at 50 cents per hour. These are items that you normally can't buy at any price, and for which no equivalent exists on the market today.

As it happens, I don't like using computer-controlled test equipment, because it normally requires me to look away from what I'm doing in order to operate the test equipment, which I can do by "feel" (or by "braille") with properly designed test equipment, not much of which is available these days.

I pointed the O/P to several 100-MHz + 'scopes listed at well under $100 and a few more promising ones listed at somewhat more. Saving money on test gear does require that one read the datasheets, ask relevant questions, and know what it is one is buying before the money changes hands.

RE