Ok first off this is not for the consumers but guys who can install and OS and may need to adds parts.
I buy a lot of laptops from colleges near here . They put out scrap laptops, many are i5 and i7 and have ram. Many just need a hard drive and OS while some also need minor parts like hard drive covers and caddies. I get these for as little as $10. I paid $20 once and got an HP DV8 with 16Gb ram. I sold it 2 days later running windows 10 with 2-320 Gig hard drives for a profit of $175. I have connections where I get used 2.5 hard drives in lots of 10 and tested good as I buy them. The seller does corp upgrades and these drives are pulled from working units. Test them with Crystal Disk Info before you buy. I can get 320Gb hdd's for $14 in lots of 10 or more. I found a guy doing the same with Ram and got 20-DDR3 4Gb laptop ram sticks for $10 each, but he was also selling at that price in 1's and 2's and I found both on craigslist. Another was selling 256Gb SSD's for $50 with an average of 20,000 hours use on them which is nothing to an SSD.
The colleges I buy from also have places to can test them out. they also have some that are tested and maybe higher end and they cost more, but still cheap. Example: Lenovo t420 i5 4Gb ram 250HD no OS $75. Lenovo W530 last week with 8Gb ram and 160Gb hdd was $100 but it has a 2Gb video card and a nice i7 processor Chargers not included. I went to the State surplus store and got a rare find, brand new Lenovo 20 volt 90 watt chargers in sealed boxes, $5 I bought them out.
Last week I was checking craislist again and saw a guy selling a T420 way too cheap and new I could flip it so I went there and got a bonus. All of the T420's I've had were i5's, this was a T420 which means slim. It was an i7 and had an Nvidia card in it and now has my hard drive in it and I sold my T420 i5 at a profit.
I also have run ads on craigslist that I will recycle their laptops for free since local government charges $10 for anything with a screen. I take them to the scrap metal yard and sell them by the pound when I have a load. Last check they were 75 a pound so you want a big load. The dead batteries get 65 cents a pound and motherboards are $1.50 a pound
