"Brian MacD" writes:
The camcorder was a very good consumer model 3 or 4
years ago, the Sony TRV11, and cost about $US2,200.

A TRV11 wasn't worth anywhere near that much 3 or 4 years ago. I
think they were around $1200 new. You can buy them used on ebay now
for $350 or so. They are consumer cameras, and as such, there will be
a lot of them out there with very low usage (a few shots of the kid's
xmas play, a few more of the cat jumping around, you get the idea).