I bought an XL Green Egg that had been in a fire and  I got it for $100 (Canadian).

The top and bottom ceramic shell is in perfect shape. I was told that the soot would never come off and that the hinge was unusable. They were wrong on both counts.

I've included some pictures of what it looked like when I picked it up, and what it looked like only 20 minutes later after using some  oven cleaner to remove the soot.  As you can see, it looks like new and it was super easy to clean.

 Before:

After 20 minutes:

The hinge is fine other than one spring that is slightly over stretched, but I hope to be able to get a replacement fairly easily. 

It doesn't have a vent cap, but I hope I can find some used parts online. 

This weekend I'll replace the charred wood handle, which will be fairly simple. but sadly I'll lose the BGE branding on it.

My biggest challenge is that there is no fire box. I'm hoping to find someone with a used fire box that was broken or cracked and repair that for use. 

If that doesn't prove feasible, I may just spring for a new fire box, but they run about $350.  I'd still be into this thing for way less money than new, or even used for that matter, but I'd like to keep my costs down as much as possible. 

Oh, and I was told  the thermometer was toast, but I removed it, cleaned it, and tested it, and it works just fine. 

I didn't try the oven cleaner  on the bottom slider, but some fine steel wool looks like it will clean it up just fine. Here's a quick test showing some soot removed after a few strokes. 

 If nothing else, I have a project and I'm having a ton of fun, which is worth a hundred bucks on its own.  Plus it's kind of cool to now to be able to say I have an Egg.  

If anyone has suggestions, warnings, thoughts, words of wisdom, I'd love to hear it. I'll try and update this post as I progress.

Brian