RuskEnt,
I checked Machinery Trader and came up with the following on the summary page.
Nine machines sold at auction, high $35,000, low $18,000, average $27,889.
Five machines offered at retail, high $59,500, low $40,000, average $48,900.
The dealers would have you believe they have inspected and done some repair work to their machine making it worth more to purchase from them. This machine is ten years old and no dealer is going to it fix up to sell it. It is not expensive enough to get the kind of margin necessary to pay for anymore than cleaning.
The seller is asking high auction sale price and it may be well worth it. But you should consider that if your seller took the machine to auction he would have to pay for freight, cleaning, fixing any obvious issues that might make it look bad on the ramp and pay the commission which is never less than ten percent. That might net him about $31,000 after expenses and commission. It is more likely though that the machine would only sell for the average of $27,889 therefore netting him around $24,500. Now you have your range of value for negotiation.
Another question that I would ask is why the low hours on an expensive and productive machine. Ten years of operation on single shifts could show twenty thousand hours of operation. This meter showing 6,000 hours in ten years means the machine only works 600 hours a year? I don't know anyone who could make payments for the machine at that, much less make a profit. Something is wrong!
Good Luck