Where do all of those cheap eBay workstation computers come from?

[pangaea]

I strongly suspect that the US government or a contractor company like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc is somehow selling them in bulk to those eBay sellers. They're also people who would probably not mind spending the money to upgrade frequently. I've noticed some have stickers that say stuff like "US Government Unclassified" and that many are sold at an extra discount because they don't come with a hard drive (which would be logical for security reasons if they were used by the military or something). They're great for converting into budget gaming or general use computers and you get a lot of bang for your buck; the laptops also tend to be more user-serviceable than the more consumer-ish laptops out there right now. They're great buys for tech savvy cheapskates like me but I'm just curious what the original source is exactly.

[Wh0_Am_1]

1 minute ago, pangaea said:

I strongly suspect that the US government or a contractor company like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc is somehow selling them in bulk to those eBay sellers. They're also people who would probably not mind spending the money to upgrade frequently. I've noticed some have stickers that say stuff like "US Government Unclassified" and that many are sold at an extra discount because they don't come with a hard drive (which would be logical for security reasons if they were used by the military or something). They're great for converting into budget gaming or general use computers and you get a lot of bang for your buck; the laptops also tend to be more user-serviceable than the more consumer-ish laptops out there right now. They're great buys for tech savvy cheapskates like me but I'm just curious what the original source is exactly.

What class of computers are you talking about exactly? Are you talking about like HP Compaq 8300s, or like the Dell Optiplex 790?

[Syntaxvgm]

I want to see specifics. Ebay links are banned, but mainly for the reason of trying to push stuff you're selling. Just give some screenshots. 

Also yea, typically government or not workstations are cheaper as they're dumped. Like dell precisions and optiplex systems are dumped in mass for cheap for example. 

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Syntaxvgm said:

Ebay links are banned, but mainly for the reason of trying to push stuff you're selling.

If it's to something relevant to the discussion(linking some Optiplexes in this case), they are allowed.

 

The reason business computers are so cheap and get dumped all at once is due to the way companies and corporations tend to upgrade their systems en masse, rather than do it in small increments.

[Syntaxvgm]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

If it's to something relevant to the discussion(linking some Optiplexes in this case), they are allowed.

 

The reason business computers are so cheap and get dumped all at once is due to the way companies and corporations tend to upgrade their systems en masse, rather than do it in small increments.

that's kinda what I mean by that, but I've been hit with that for no reason so I just keep it safe. 

 

[pangaea]

1 minute ago, Wh0_Am_1 said:

What class of computers are you talking about exactly? Are you talking about like HP Compaq 8300s, or like the Dell Optiplex 790?

I bought a Lenovo w540 a while back that's mentioned in my signature. I also bought a Dell M6500 laptop and 2 toughbooks throughout college (I remember one of those being marked with a green "US Government Unclassified" sticker). A really long time ago we had a couple of Dell Xeon PCs in my house, one of which had one of those green stickers. eBay currently has a lot of HP Z4000, Dell Precision T3500, and similar models 

[Stringer18]

lol the gov need to make some of there money back haha. i bet they don't have to pay ebay fee's lol

[aisle9]

14 minutes ago, pangaea said:

I strongly suspect that the US government or a contractor company like Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, etc is somehow selling them in bulk to those eBay sellers. They're also people who would probably not mind spending the money to upgrade frequently. I've noticed some have stickers that say stuff like "US Government Unclassified" and that many are sold at an extra discount because they don't come with a hard drive (which would be logical for security reasons if they were used by the military or something). They're great for converting into budget gaming or general use computers and you get a lot of bang for your buck; the laptops also tend to be more user-serviceable than the more consumer-ish laptops out there right now. They're great buys for tech savvy cheapskates like me but I'm just curious what the original source is exactly.

When a company brings new computers online, the old ones have to go somewhere. A few (relatively speaking) will be kept as backups, but most will make their way to systems refurbishers, either via auction or by direct sale. Those systems refurbishers place them on eBay typically with minimal work done to them beyond making sure they boot and maybe installing a hard drive. When you're talking about a Fortune 500 company, you're probably talking about north of 1,000 systems being decommissioned at a time. In the largest of the large, it's frequently 10,000+ at a time. Now consider that every college out there is running boatloads of Optiplexes, state and local governments have thousands of desktops in circulation, and the federal government is swimming with them.

 

If someone has pockets deep enough to buy a pallet of 100 systems for around $2,000, the profit margin is huge--but it's going to take a long, long time to clear all of those out, and if you have to install RAM or hard drives that's going to eat up profit. If you don't have a Windows COA on the computer, that's going to lower the resale price. Condition is king, too. Two identically-specced Optiplex 790s will sell for wildly different prices if one's clean and the other is scuffed up, missing rubber feet, etc. Those systems also have higher than normal return rates because it's totally impractical for a reseller to photograph and list every system individually, so they'll grab a couple of representative samples and state that the other computers are in similar condition. "Similar" is a relative term, and it's not unusual for buyers to initiate a return because there was a scratch or a scuff somewhere not in the pictures, and people don't understand what "representative" means.

 

So, tl;dr, if you can afford to do it in volumes of 1,000+ PCs, can afford to add hard drives and RAM and take a higher than normal return hit, there's good money in flipping retired office units. If you can't afford the volume or hits to your profit margin, do something else with your life.

[kingmustard]

35 minutes ago, Stringer18 said:

lol the gov need to make some of there money back haha. i bet they don't have to pay ebay fee's lol

their*

[Yoinkerman]

Literally any company with more than like 50 employees would be using said computers

[NineEyeRon]

I’m guessing the likes of that company Linus couldn’t buy anything from in Scrapyard Wars (7?)

 

I really felt sorry for that guy on the phone.