I bought all my ps3 off from craigslist. It's up to you where you wanna get and if you wanna get already jailbroken.
There's always pros and cons to everything.
It's already expensive to buy a ps3 then spend more money to buy hardware to downgrade it. Very time consuming to open up and install and verify. Also, you will have to do a lot of research to make sure you're on the right path. And the possibility you might brick or fuck up your shit if you fuck up somewhere.
But, having to hardware to downgrade has its perks. It more assuring that no one has stolen your console ID, since you downgraded yourself. And the possibility to bring it back to life from a brick, if you have a good dump/backup of your bios.
Or
Just buy it already jailbroken for maybe more or about the same price as buying it w/ hardware to downgrade. Skip the time consuming process of downgrading and just plug and play.
But, more likely they might have stolen you console ID and if the PS3 bricks the chances of bring it back to life is slim to none without the hardware. Also, if your little bro or cousin comes in out of town and decides to play the latest game they just bought and decide to update your firmware, because the game requires it and you didn't spoof your shit, you're pretty much fucked and have to buy hardware or have someone downgrade your shit.
Up to you in the end!!!!!!
E3 flasher does not require soldering.