I had a local owner come over to have me swap his gauge leds for him the other day. He had already purchased the leds from Top Bright on ebay. During the swap, I found several of these leds that were clearly used previously. Some still had enough solder on the pads to tell they had been removed from something else (they were far more than tinned). One even had a burned spot on the plastic body from a soldering iron! They all worked in the end, but what gets me is that it seems that it would be less profitable to obtain used leds, clean them up and re-package them than to just sell new ones! After about 6-7 of them came out of the package looking obviously used, I am confident to say this. I would think twice about ordering from them. The unfortunate thing about ordering electronic parts from China is that you almost never know what you are getting (Even spec-wise). I order my leds from a place in Hong-Kong, but found them over time to be reliable and have never seen signs of used parts in the mix. The brightness and color seems to match the much more expensive units I used to buy when I first started doing the tC led swaps back in early 05, so I have stuck with them. But I have seen some pretty shady stuff come from the manufacturers over there as well.

Just a heads up on this one.

 

I thought that seller was reputable in eBay.. I guess now..
Were they in the packaging or lose LED??

I order them directly from manufacturer in over 10k pieces at a time... so I get them exact to my specification....

 

I too order mine in larger bulk from a different vendor.

And these were in the packaging. Same packaging mine and I am sure yours come in (Standard strip with clear film over them). That is what gets me... it would seem to be a pain to repackage them. You could do it, but it just seems to kill any value of reselling them. But the fact that they had some bent leads that showed the sign of being bent from removal, plus solder still blobbed on them leads me to believe they had to be used. Then I found the ones that had melted corners where a soldering iron had been applied improperly. That really made me believe it. I have seen God knows how many after being removed from the board... so those stood right out

 

Damn... it's hard to believe used LED were actually in the SMD packaging..

 

Tell me about it. But it was too obvious not to believe. If you have the strip and the film though, I guess it would not be too hard to stick it back over them. I just dont see a real reason for doing this really, which is why it confuses me