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Comment by JMTQp8lwXL | Hacker News Reader

How does one go about finding deals like this? I wouldn't mind a MBP for a third of retail price.

I have a site that churns through the eBay API and dumps cheap but durable used laptops here:

It saves me time when friends/family ask me for used laptop recommendations, and the eBay referral program nets me some beer money on the side.

That's awesome! Would be curious to see a tab for servers too.

Thanks! Hopefully I'll get some time to add that at some point. LabGopher provides something similar for servers but with more advanced filtering:

https://www.labgopher.com/

This is a great site, thank you very much!

can you add Australia? Please.

Great tool thank you!

You aren't filtering out HDD, though.

A competent SSD is $30 or less. That upgrade cost is something to think about when looking at laptops in the $300 range but definitely not a deal breaker.

I asked before in HN and someone pointed me to hibid.com, that's where I looked. The auctions come in wave. Sometimes there's no companies need liquidation. Sometimes lot of companies need to sell. Just wait a bit for the upcoming auctions.

Edit: Here're some MacBook auctions currently. https://hibid.com/lots/?q=macbook. You might need to wait for an auction local to you to come up.

Just checked, some of the items look too good to be true

https://hibid.com/lot/67650485/lenovo-thinkpad-t410-laptop-w...

$30 for that?? What am I missing?

That’s the current highest bid, not what it will necessarily sell for.

If you are not familiar with EBay, auctions work with a max bid per bidder, but the displayed price is the lowest bid that beat the lowest bid by some minimum or matched the initial price. The way it usually works for a popular item is savvy bidders will wait til the last second to bid what they think will win or what they think the item is worth, no matter what the current price is, and the actual price is set by the lowest maximum bid, so if someone bid $10 on a $5 item, the price is $5, then I bid $8, the price goes up to $8 and the initial bidder is still winning. I only bid using an online service that enters a bid 3 seconds before the end of the auction. Some people do this manually. Sellers can set a reserve minimum price but otherwise the bids set the final price. Also shipping

> I only bid using an online service that enters a bid 3 seconds before the end of the auction.

I don't get why people do this. eBay has what they call "proxy" bidding, so in effect you're only paying the second-highest bid if you win the auction. You might as well bid your perceived maximum directly.

> Sniping helps to eliminate competitive bids. It also prevents other bidders from discovering your proxy (maximum) bid because your bid is kept completely private until the very end of the auction. It keeps your interest in an item private

From: https://www.ezsniper.com/faqs.php3

It's because for lots of people 'perceived maximum' isn't fixed.

Imagine you just lost an auction. I come up to you and say "Would you pay $5 more than your max bid if I guaranteed you'd win?" If you believe anyone would ever say 'yes' to the above then you agree the auction sniping service has utility.

Having the auction time extend if any bid is put in the last few minutes, ensures it will settle on the highest price anyone is willing to pay, and the best result for the seller.

I wonder if eBay doesn't do this, because the "fun" of sniping and not knowing until the end whether you win, and occasionally losing (variable reinforcement), and the feeling of getting a bargain less than someone else might have paid when it works, all combine to make it more like gambling and more compelling to potential buyers?

I bid $50. You bid $100. I check the listing and see I got outbid (it's at $50.01). I decide I'm actually willing to pay a little more, so I hike my bid up to $70 to try and outbid you. Doesn't work, and now you pay $20 more than you would have I'd you'd sniped and I didn't know I was going to get outbid.

Why one wants a thinkpad with the first gen processor? Here is a tip for thinkpad numbering. T4x0s = generation x or (x-1) processor, s for slim. Right now, Lenovo is selling 8th gen processor laptops: T480 and T490.

Better buy used P/W series laptops if one wants a workhorse.

You want to start at x20 at the lowest, Sandy Bridge generation.

Many big players have off-lease or refurbished pages. Here is Dell's, for example: https://www.dellrefurbished.com/laptops?p=1. I have seen prices as low as $200 but rarely lower than that. Many of the least-expensive ones also still appear to come with mechanical HDs, not SSDs, and these days I'd expect to replace the former with the latter.

Sometimes looking for deals on craigslist. Every now and then you will see someone that doesn't know the value of what they're selling. In 2016, I was able to find a 15" MBP for only $750. The guy listed as a cracked laptop when it was a small 3 inch scratch near the corner of the screen, so no one reached out to him. It's hard to notice when the laptop is on even when you're looking at it. Probably the best purchase I ever made.

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