How to get hold of Hydroponic Gear? Ebay.

Another way of getting the equipment was to buy it. Whenever I need to buy anything I turn automatically to ebay. I entered the term 'hydroponic grow room' into the search bar not quite knowing what to expect (I have to say here that having previously entered the term 'nuclear bunker' I was surprised to find the MOD selling just that in my area).

What was returned were pages and pages and pages of hundreds of items including equipment for whole grow rooms. One entry from an address in Hexham caught my eye. The product description set out a plausible story with the seller, a landlord who had rented a property to tenants who had left the rent unpaid and abandoned an array of 600W metal halide lamps, reflectors, ballasts, electrical controllers, flood and drain systems etc. etc. in his house. There is normally no need to put an excuse for selling something into a product description but there you go.

He said that these had lain unused in his garage for the last two years and, as his photographs showed, much of this material had never been taken out of the box. I found myself wondering if he was a legitimate seller or whether this story was a front.

I decided to watch the item.

He claimed that the retail value of all this material was approximately £2,500. As I watched, the bidding climbed from a few hundred pounds to an eventual sale price close to the end of the auction of over £600. I wondered who might have bought this material and what use they would put it to. I wondered where the cash they would use to buy it would come from and what the paper trail might be. I wondered if I bought this material with Vista Projects money would I be able to ask for a VAT receipt. I decided that this was a world in which VAT receipts along with the second names of the vendors were probably not made available too often.

So having drawn a blank I turned back to ebay and my now saved search for a ‘hydroponic grow room’. I began to watch other items and also bought a book ‘Grow like a Pro’ a compilation of articles on how to grow cannabis. I settled briefly on a grow room for sale in West Yorkshire. The seller was registered as a business seller who could provide a VAT receipt. Because of this I was able to get his company details and a postcode. I saved images of the equipment offered for sale on ebay and put the postcode and the address into Google Earth to locate the property. One of the photographs showed a set of drainage trays and in the corner of the photograph was a pink child’s bike, the same bike could clearly be seen outside the house on Google Earth.

The interior construction of the garage in which the trays were shown corresponded to the asbestos type of garage that could be seen in the drive.

This began to look like a genuine prospect.

The equipment list was as follows:

6 x Canopy
6 x Power Plant Horticultural lighting Ballast
1 x Eco - switch b/t (timer brand new)
1 x Blue lab truncheon (brand new)
2 x Timer switches (not shown on pics)
1 x Primair combined temperature and fan speed controller ( brand new)
6x Small power head pumps
1 x Large power head pump
1 x Water proof ph scan one tester (brand new)
6 x Bulbs 600watts veg or flower sun master UIS-VRD
2 x Bulbs sun master flowering bulbs ( brand new)
2 x Fans
1 x Ducting (not shown in pics)
2 x Grow trays 51cm x 142cm
2 x florescent modular lighting 63cm x 60cm
1 x Full roll (unopened brand new) hydroponics infa red stop reflective sheeting

I watched the item and rang the vendor who had left a number on ebay for enquiries to ask about the VAT receipt. He was very surprised to get my call. I searched the classified listings of his local newspaper to find evidence of his trading activity. He told me that the bid price would be what I paid and VAT wouldn’t be added. It didn’t matter about VAT anyway because he was selling it for a friend. I decided not to bid and was relieved to think that I had remembered to dial 141 before ringing him. In the event the auction attracted 25 bids and the lot went for £620.

Most of the hydroponics equipment I was looking at for sale on ebay could be located in Manchester, Liverpool and in East Lancashire but it was only occasionally possible to identify the actual seller or location as ebay preserves anonymity. Quite often (and legitimately) people sell things for other people. I was worried that I might think I was buying from an address in leafy Tatton only to find myself collecting from and paying cash in Moss Side!

At the end of this episode I began to think about paranoia. As I do not take this drug I found myself thinking how bad the experience of paranoia might be for anybody that actually did smoke it.

The worst of this method was that at the close of the exhibit I might have to resell the equipment and all these risk, trust and paranoia issues would surface again.