If you still haven’t gotten a plasma cutter, check out my thread about buying a Hypertherm from a local dealer:
If a new one is out of your price range right now, go hit up your local pawn shops. Unless a machine was just put out on the floor, you can almost always negotiate the price with them. Do your homework though, (e.g., cost of consumables, power requirements, reliability; what’s the pawn shop’s return policy, etc.) Sometimes you can get a killer deal, sometimes you get an expensive paperweight.