Questionon buying Steam game

[tiggers]

I already have HL2, but wanted to Orange box for the extra episodes and games.
I saw a good deal on a used Orange Box for HL2. So I contacted the seller and asked which games had been installed and registered on steam.

The response I got:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Doesn't matter, because I'm no longer registered.

I sold episode one of Half Life with no registration problems.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Is this correct? I haven't used steam since getting HL2 about 3 years ago, and I couldn't find an answer to the question after looking around on steam's forums or yahoo searches.

 

[Lonyo]

Don't buy it. You can't AFAIK close a Steam account, or transfer keys (without a lot of hassle and only in select circumstances).
Don't ever buy a used Steam game unless the seller is up front about the fact you are buying an account and not a key.

 

[tiggers]

Saw a new sealed copy in Circuit City today (wasn't there last week, along with ~20 copies of team fortress and Doom 3) and got it for $15

Opened it up and found only one serial number. So I'm guessing all the used Orange Boxes, even if only one game is played, is locked for all the games. Thanks for the warning. Now to go figure out how the rest of Steam works again...