Receiver for rent.

How much does this receiver really cost? Good question. We can tell you how much you’ll pay today to bring it home. But you won’t know what it cost until a few years from now, when you sell it.

Because what you pay for something is only half of the equation. The other half is what you can get for it when you’re finished using it.

Oh, it’ll cost something. Except for cases like real estate and certain collectible plates from the Franklin Mint, you’ll never make money selling your used stuff. But the big loss is the drop from “new” to “used”.

Cars are the most obvious example of this price-drop plateau, losing 10% of their value the minute they roll off the lot - but then only another 10% in the year after that. So if you can get a really good price to begin with, then drive it for a year and trade it in? Dude, SCORE.

Now, we can’t promise you can roll this Pioneer receiver over into a big down payment on a better one a year from now. But at a discount this steep, it’s the best shot you have at a cheap one- or two-year rental while you wait to trade up.

Let’s say it’s 2017, you’re ready for a new receiver, and you decide to just dump this one to a friend for whatever you can get for it. Let’s say 75 bucks, about half of what you’re paying today. You could probably get more, but you know how cheap your friends are.

That’s when you’ll know what the true cost of “renting” this Pioneer receiver was: about $75. Seventy-five bucks for two years’ use of 5.1-channel sound, four HDMI 2.0 inputs, and a front-facing USB port for playing music from your mobile device or USB drive. That’s a little more than three bucks a month. Good luck finding a deal like that from the U-Rent-We-Own-U scum.

And you’ll have a little cash to put toward your bigger, better, newer receiver. We’ll probably have that one cheap by then, too. See you in 2017.