best way to get good stepping?

1700 or 1800

Should I just try to find someone that has one, and wants to sell it or try my luck with some website?

Local computer shops are your best bet right now - small businesses, not huge places. See if the guy will let you look at the CPU stepping before buying. You will also have a higher chance of getting an unlocked CPU if you go to a store that doesn't get much traffic.

yeah, its getting real tough as of late. at least as im told all the 1700's as unlocked since they stopped making them before they started locking multi's. just gotta watch for A cores though.

Well im not sure im that experienced w/ looking at the steppings or know which ones are good and which ones arent. The local stores.. im not sure if theyd let me look at the stepping.

Any of the following:
Make sure the top line is as follows:
AXDA1700DLT3C. the L is very important it means that the chip's default vcore is 1.5, this is what you want.
the stepping should be something like this:
JIUHB, JIXIB, JIXHB and so on. Do not get anything with the 4th letter lower than H (like G or C). And ofcourse don't let the stepping end with an A, like AIUGA or the like, that's a TBredA. Also just to make sure you don't get a locked one, look at the date code (just after the stepping, 4 numbers),the format is yyww, so 0338 or 0337 or anything wich is week 38 or lower is what you want, as from week 39 they started to lock some chips when on week 43 all chips were coming locked.