Alright, this hit my 2 month research time limit… 11/4/2022 Posting date, i think i started the spreadsheet in august? lol

Tried to get everything down, but it taking too much time. Had some shit go down IRL, basically wrecked my current daily driver, my Toyota Prius and well, I gotta change a few things in my life. The good thing is that, I get to drive my 1999 Honda Civic, so we VTEC and manual again 😀 My mind is busy thinking about maintenence, tires, and setting up a sound system on that thaaang. At the same time, I am obsessing over my new camera, the Nikon Zfc, and sort of hate how shitty the FTZ adapter is. So I want to buy more lenses on that thing, currenntly 28mm 2.8 and a 24-70mm f/4 S, looking to get a Macro lens or another prime, so… i gotta do price research b4 i buy.

Some of the notes are taken from TPG V6.1, which is now renamed V6.2, as I added a spreadsheet for sellers.

On the spreadsheet there are 19 sellers, on here, there are…. I’m not counting, comment below and I’ll throw the number & who said it here. Throw any number :D

These are in no real sort order, I did tried to have one earlier, but it’s shelved. On the spreadsheet I have a sort of ranking n shit.

based seller xsauc type of photo

Basically when buying you want to see pictures of the actual fucking laptop or device you are buying. Almost everything for sale on eBay has 6 sides to it, front, right, top, bottom, etc. For a laptop we have 2 extra sides to it, the screen and the keyboard. g

So that means we need 8 photos for the damn thing. However in some cases you’ll want more, like a photo of the serial, a photo of certain specs. Also when taking a photo directly above the keyboard, it is possible to not show keyboard shine, so you may need it at a certain angle or the light source at a certain angle to see it.

Actually skip what that is all about

What to look for

• Basically look for if it comes with a charger in the photo or description
• does it say it comes with a hard drive and or caddy?
• Does it say what CPU it has, LCD, and RAM? Usually in title.
• Does it say what graphics it has? Likely not
  • Looking up the MTM, Serials, or Dell Service Number can find you the specs tho 🙂
• If it looks dinged or broken, it might sell for cheaper,
  • always check to see if that part is available for purchase & consider if it’s worth the hassle
  • Sometimes parts can be interchanged with other laptops too, and it might be cheaper that way
• Does the seller have at least 10 sales on the feedback score? Also how long have they been selling?
  • A red flag is a $900 laptop selling for like $100…
• Is their 100% feedback positive?
  • Check negative feedback bc buyers can be dumb.
• Does it say anything about it has with a battery?
  • “Battery not warrantied” basically means untested, BUT if its within 2-4 years of release, it could be good
  • If its 5 years or older, it may not hold a charge
  • Apple laptops will often have a readout via the MacOS software, but some sellers don’t bother
  • Dell laptops have a battery health in BIOS, Excellent I think means at least 85%, good is well below that
• No hard drive, no OS?
  • Check to see if it needs a damn HDD cable, if NVMe, u should be fine.
  • Install windows or linux via USB
    • I will not say how to install windows, plenty of online tutorials, like one on this website 🙂

Well thats it, here’s some sellers to get a feel. Based sellers are the ones I like the most. Its not complete, and any seller not listed here doesn’t mean they suck. It means I got tired of looking these MFers up, and some just don’t sell a grip of ThinkPads at the time I did my price guide.

ePawnAmerica – 436K sold – 2000 – MN / WI – 5600 Items – 5 TPs
3rd to 11th gen – $80 to $1000+ – Reformated – Detailed & newbie freindly

Came across them selling a T15 Gen 1, not that many ThinkPads for sale, but 15 sold in the past 3 months at the time of writing. They’ve been selling since the 2000’s… also their name implies Pawn Shop, I’m assuming they got someone smart to sell laptops, so yeah. I happen to like Pawn Shops on eBay, more than local ones (San Bernardo county & San Diego). I got a nice price on my Nikon D7200 from a eBay Pawn Shop and I think… ok something else too. Unfortunately theese folks have BIN only, no best offer, and out of all their 5600 items (as of this post), there are 16 auctions and ZERO best offers…. holy shit lol but hey, they’ve been in business since then, so I guess they just cut prices and call it a day. Very detailed specs, graphics, resolution, RAM, CPU, OS is installed, and they have the MTM / MPN / Serial numbers, all in the description and in the photo… For the casual, maybe not get the best deal, this is it. Plus if you watch the item and no one buy its, when they cut the price, you can buy it then.

greencitizen-resuse – 291K sold – 2006 – 900+ items – 100 laptops – 20 TPs + Macs
3td to 10th gen – $25 to $800+ – scrap, rebuilds & quick refurbs

BASED SELLER

Biased about green citizen, because I have bought from them, gotten some deals and sold a few laptops for beer money. They auction at 99 cents without reserve, not just ThinkPads, Macs, desktops & even have Sony CRT $$$. They have descriptive listings, specs and photos, on some they include chargers, other they don’t but at least they’ll say if it does come or not. You could get a broken machine only if you don’t read if it’s broken or not, also they do have BIN laptops & pulled parts too. In their descriptions they’ll post extra photos from the 12 eBay limit… corners, bios splash, keyboard, everything. All of their machines have their own serial numbers, so it would be fairly easy for them to ship the right laptop. I find them on many different ThinkPad sold listings, but they seem to have most of the mainstream ones, a few workstations as well, and ultrabooks.

bruincomputer – New York – 96K sold – 1999 – 120 items – 60 laptops
C2D to 9th Gen – $30 to $550+ – parts to lite refurb – all sales – top tier

!!! BASED SELLER !!!

I think I had bought from this seller before, I have them saved. They sell it all, mostly Lenovo, then Dell, and finally HP, not too many other things. They take very nice photos, clear large pictures & concise specs. Of the photos taken, they don’t take a photo of the front side or rear, but the clear photos of the left and right sides should suffice. They also take a screenshot of the laptop, showing “About this PC”, Device Manager & DirectX Diagnostics. That basically tells you the CPU, RAM, GPU, LCD, SSD & ofc what windows is installed. They check if the machine is under warranty, and will screenshot if it is! Most working machines will come with a charger, and if it doesn’t have a drive, they’ll show a photo of the BIOS at least. If you’re looking for a certain LCD panel, they will fucking say what resolution it is! Which is awesome if you’re looking for a higher end panel (unfortunately if there are multiple UHD screens, it won’t say exactly which LCD it is, device manager puts generic LCD monitor). They clean the machines pretty well, on pretty much all of them, minus dents and scratches. They seem to have a flat $20 shipping fee or even $9.99 on others, which i think will depend on the size and if it comes with a charger or not. They got over 300 laptops sold at the time of this post, and it seems you can get a decent system to rebuild under $100. Also they’ll have who listed the item at the very bottom of the screen, so some of the default photos have different angles I’m assuming and a few have a blue marble designed table in the background if it’s not white or photoshopped clear white. Also holy shit… they sold an Agilent Network Analyzer for $13K, and they fucking started the auction at 99 cents. There was another device they had a BIN for $11K, but fucking… they listed that shit for 99 cents no fucks given, plus estimated shipping, hats off to them. On other listings I haven’t noticed this, but they have a 15% restocking fee… bite the bullet and don’t look back!

Human-I-T – LA California – 180K sold – 2012 – 1.3K items – 300 laptops – 60+ TPs
Human-I-T-Detroit – Michigan – 2020 – 580 items – 400 laptops
1st to 9th Gen – $45 to $900+ – all conditions – all sales – charity eWaste

BASED SELLER

GUESS WHO IS BIASED? I found out about these folks when I bought my $100 W550s which ended up being worth about $500 (after spending maybe $150 in parts) if I wanted to sell it… but yeah, I think i bought a few items from them after that, maybe a macbook or something else. Anywho they got about 7 photos of all the basics, they don’t seem to post a photo of the laptop on sometimes, but they’ll post specs, LCD res and graphics in the description along w/ other specs too. They also say if it includes a charger in there too. Some systems are just wiped and don’t have an OS (or just no drive), so a quick re-install should do the trick for most. Oh yeh, I bought from the LA seller, I don’t know about the Detroit seller, but I assume they are just as good. They sell everything, the big 3 business notebooks, Macbooks, gaming laptops & other equipment too.

kalis computerandmore – N. California – 2013 – 500 items – 200+ laptops
1st to 9th gen – $65 to $550+ – junk/parts to used –

OOF. These guys are expensive. They sell lots tho. Some of the computers they sell are in really bad condition, which is OK as they do fairly nice photos and descriptions of whats wrong. Quite a bit of them have missing keys on the keyboard on the junkers, so IF that’s not a problem, perhaps this is where to get a good parts machine from.

TechReCommerce – New York – 77K sold – 2014 – 420 items – 60 TPs
2nd to 10th Gen – $40 to $1000 – all conditions – No OS

This is a great seller if you don’t want an operating system installed, which will decrease it’s price vs ones set up. Funny, their windows machines don’t have anything installed, but their MacBooks have their shit reinstalled… Their descriptions are cool, they say if it comes with a charger, drive, and the condition of it, in images. However quite a few photos of their machines showing “heavy wear” in the description, show like very nice machines, just keyboard wear. I found them selling a lot of T430’s in v6.1.

Red-Door-Tech – Indianapolis – 216K sold – 2014 – 1900 items – 80 laptops – 19 TPs
2nd to 8th gen – $50 to $380 – as is & rebuilds – No HDDs – toughbooks – BIN

Never bought from them, but they post specs and have good photos taken. I think none of the available listings come with a hard drive, and some may not come for a battery. The physical conditions are everywhere, so just be sure to check photos. Oh wait they have multiple units in the listings, which isn’t bad, but some of y’all are sticklers that there’s a scratch on the palmrest and not on the lid… anyways, new to me is that, they put information in the Item specifics, like bios lock, post, specs and other things… I’m just used to that in the description, but hey, that works too i guess.

poeent – Ohio – 3.7K sold – 2013 – 120 laptops – 30 TPs

1st to 7th Gen – $50 to $800 – parts to used – small e-waste seller – BIN

They don’t have photos of the sides, but of the screen, keyboard, top and bottom, I guess thats all you need. But goddamn… they’ll wipe the laptop with a rag & immediately take a photo. Better than not wiping it afterwards and having waterspots, critique about it aside, you’re gonna wipe it down when you get it home. Basically if it shows a photo of the bios, it has no drive, if it shows windows or mac? it gots an OS and drive, one thing i like is the sticky pad w/ the number. Best way to do inventory management b4 shipping.

marscot-mvdiqjq8 – South Dakota – 17K sold -2015 – 170 items – 80 laptops – 5 TPs
2nd to 8th Gen – $50 to $200 – parts to used – small e-waste seller – BIN, Auctions & lots

I saw this seller from the T520 search, currently they don’t have much ThinkPads, they do have a lot of HP laptops, then Fujitsu and Dell are tied. Fair bit of chromebooks, they also sell lots of five up to 10 for regular machines, and try to sell lots of chromebooks up to 50… crazy stuff, and there are a few listings where they will have multiples of them, so perhaps a fleet purchase will be ideal for you. Description not crazy, but has basic specs, says if it comes with a charger or battery (no guarantee about charge, but thats oK!), they’ll take questions about the item, so ask away if you got one. Photos are not the best, some are blurry, & looks to be from one light source very close. Probably good if you want to get an Elitebook, I haven’t done pricing for them for like forever… but some of them seem pretty cheap, like Dell Latitudes.

Second_Life_Tehcnology – 2.9K sold – 2020 – 700 items – 65 “laptops” – 20 TPs
C2D to 7th Gen – $25 – $300 – parts to used – newbie ready – Portland

They sell older ThinkPads, descriptions are great, actually one of the listing had intimate details about the problems it has… which is what you want to see! lol, One of the listings, they had a battery tester program… said 100%, but on some of the listings, they have updated windows and bios, so like they are fairly ready to go!

fastscrap / electronicequipmentdepot – 145K sold – 2002 – 300 items
1st to 8th Gen – $35 to $460 – scrap to ez rebuild – no drive eWaste seller

At the time, they did not have any ThinkPads listed, however in the past 3 months of this post, they’ve sold 148 TPs, of that 2600 items have been sold. That’s pretty fuckin good if you ask me, inventory in and out, because it sucks once you get past 500 items in shelves… ALso almost all of their laptops do not come with a hard drive, maybe a caddy and cover, but no drives, unless its soldered in or really fucking hard to remove. They got a few Dell Precision 7×20 and 7×10 machines for cheap that way.

omooduaa – Illinois – 4.2K sold – 2007 – 425 items – 350 laptops – 100 TPs
C2D to 6th Gen – $55 to $400 – parts to fully functional & lots – newbie frendly

This seller is newbie friendly, they have photos of their machines with chargers, and do reinstall Windows 8/10 w/ activation. I’m assuming they use the actual OEM key in the system, but maybe it’s cracked, who knows. They also install Linux on some older machines, the ones that have Vista keys, which cannot activate Windows 10, unlike Win7 keys can… For the most part, a working machine can be had for $90, their lower machines have like fan errors, dying or cracked screen, and other issues. But they seem to be savvy, selling Dell Latitude D820 machines for $120 & saying it has a serial com port. 🙂 DO PEOPLE USE SERIAL? Legacy automation machines, car diagnostic devices, printers, vinyl cutters, CNC machines still tick after 30 years being built, but hate USB to Serial adapters. Believe me, they are not going to replace that $10K to $100K equipment, just because it doesn’t have a Bluetooth or USB-C connection… they are fine buying an old laptop for $200. Oh yeah they sold a W701 for about $700 and they sell up to lots of 5 machines. Looking at their photos, they basically have the same angle for each screen, (bios, hard drive, GPU, battery, startup screen, blank screen….) and then ANOTHER photo of the keyboard, and a photo of the top… no bottom or sides. So sucks if you’re a stickler for that, all machines have a number in the description so they can identify and ship the correct one (im assuming).

WasteCom Recycling – Iowa – 31K Sold – 500 items – 133 laptops – 35 TPs
1st to 8th Gen – $50 to $400+ – rebuilds (no HDD or OS) to fully functional – good seller

This seller is pretty good. They’ll put all the info you need to know, the specs, if it comes with a charger, or OS, and take at least 8 photos at all the sides we want to see, so we know what we are getting. I like their default photo bc they’ll show an AC adapter on the palmrest if it comes with a charger.

online_auctions – New York – 20K sold – 2011 – 60 items
3rd to 10th Gen – $30 to $360+ – Parts to refurb

Badass seller

These bros auction everything… 2000+ sold in the past 3 months! Basically machines that need drives/battery/charger, lot auctions and fixed up machines with an OS. You can get some of these super fucking cheap… jesus christ. My only nitpick is that I really don’t care for the trapezoidal photo angles of the keyboard, top and bottoms of the laptop, as opposed of it being angled as a rectangle. However since it’s in a white background and the lighting is pretty good, but some of the darker laptops may miss clarity. Descriptions are good, just missing the screen size resolution, but the rest of the specs are listed if they can test it (like a GPU); at least on the workstations I looked at.

elcycle – New Jersey – 37K sold – 2015 – 2300+ laptops – 250 TPs
2nd to 8th gen – $55 to $400 – parts to used – Awesome photos & detail

Goddamn… a lot of laptops for sale. They got different backgrounds on some pictures, because they tight like that. Their photos are excellent, quite a bit showing the specs in windows/mac, because of that maybe some might be missing a picture of the exterior (like a keyboard or bottom), but they’ll show internals (on a macbook), serials, MTMs, and best of all, no janky angles of the sides.. Specs in item specifics as opposed to the description, which actually fucking works pretty well when you do those search options on eBay.

Electrocycler-LLC – Wisconson – ??? sold – 2017 – 70 items – 35 laptops – 14 TPs
C2D or 3rd to 8th gen – $80 to $400 – as is, used & quick refurb – very good small seller

They sell more latitudes… but have fair specs in their listings, what kind of screen and graphics too. They sell some old Macintosh stuff, spectrum analyzers and even have some tubes. Most systems look to be in decent condition, no real battery test, but if you’re a Latitude fan, they’ll show the BIOS battery health, which is awesome. LENOVO WHY HAVENT U DONE THIS????

electronicscafe – NY – 621K sold, 1999 – all sales – 600 laptops – 70 TPs
2nd to 6th gen – $80 to $300 – as is to quick refurb – Very Good / newbie friendly

They sell all types of things, and a lot of ThinkPads too. They have grade a, b, c in their titles and w/ basic desciptions of what you should expect. Their titles are fairly detailed, the used description will say if it comes w/ a charger or battery and their html description is a basic copy/paste on some parts but seems to have on some listings, exact specific info on them. Some listings have multiple items, so you may not get the device photo’d (scratch on the palmrest but none on the lid like in the photos). They are Microsoft refurbished retailer, so they have their process. Overall a safe buy for a newcomer buyer. Some of these do come with chargers and AC adapters, they test them for key functions, so do not expect the battery to be 100% health… at this price that’s ok tho 🙂 seems to be a working system. and they do remove batteries on their machines too, so you’ll get a discount bc of that.

PurpleTechnado – 185K sold, 25K follows – Utah – Auctions & BIN – 200 laptops
4th Gen to NIB – $70 to $3000 – as is, wiped, refurbed & New – Higher end

They sell all sort of items & other laptops, not just ThinkPads, but on what we want, they’ll post specs in the title. They also serialize their inventory, AND take photos of the actual laptop you are bidding on. In the description they’ll say if it comes with a charger, its condition, and it has no notes about battery, although I assume it’s kept, so it’s battery life is a gamble, the newer the better.

mattsa0703/mattsa_laptop_parts – LA California – 10K sold – 30 laptops
2nd to 8th gen – $160 to $310 – lite refurb & misc parts

This seller is on the higher end of my TP price guide, they do complete re-installs, physically clean the laptop pretty well & sell it w/ a charger. They also sell some parts, like caddies, chargers, internal cables and misc SD card covers. Descriptions are fairly detailed, so you’ll know the LCD spec, GPU, but battery health isn’t listed. However looking at feedback, no one is whining about that, and shipping seems to be very nice.

EX+ & NEW

BEFORE you click on these sellers and buy one of their listings…. see what you can get from Lenovo’s actual website. Yeah there’s an employee discount or something, I have no idea how to post it, because people who do know, have to gatekeep the discount code thanks to Lenovo always cracking down and disabling it….

ellen_mouse – 29K sold, 1500 follow – Texas – BIN NIB – 200+ ThinkPad listings
Late to New – $1400 to $4600 – New in Box – No budget / fleet buyer

They pretty much sell NIB Thinkpads in bulk and have pretty good feedback for it. Perhaps they will have a configuration for a ThinkPad you will not get available soon from Lenovo. I honestly do not know how or why they have so much in stock, and how they make a profit, but quite often I see sold listings on newer and higher end latest ThinkPads, so they are here. They have pretty good feedback, and the only neutral feedback was from a RAM sale and SSD sale… which came down to buyer not happy with benchmarks (whatever), and long ship time (maybe they drop ship). But since we buy laptops, they are good if you’re looking EX+ and multiples.

laptop_parts_directory – FLORIDA MAN – 1400 feedback – 2016 – BIN – 13 TPs

Strangely I can’t find their total sales, but they basically sell brand new in box ThinkPads and have detailed listings on said laptops. T15 G1

International Sellers

Bitte-Kaufe-Mich – Germany – 42K sold – 2007 – 100 items…

Okay… they actually don’t have any laptops for sale nor any sold within the past 3 months of this post. However they were in my search results for a T43, I think it constituted for my high or EX+ price. Also that name, Bite Cock Bitch. Sorry, its just too easy to sexualize german words.

Canada

prsoffice – British Columbia – 8.7K sold – 2011 – 600 items – 100 laptops
C2D to 8th gen – $40 to $160 canuck bucks – as is to rebuild seller

A whole bunch of one bid auctions… which can suck if you have a low starting price. ugh. Quite a bit of these machines seem to sell for like under $70, almost all of them have gutted drives and no charger, hence the cheap price. Nine photos on one listing, another one had 11, and at all the angles needed.

Australia

ThinkPad Machines and Accessories – Aussie – 2.1K sold – BIN – 70+ TPs
Brand New – $1600 to $7500 aussie dollaroos

Y’all only have yourselves to blame for this. 6 sold listings in the past 3 months, specs in photos… brand new, plenty of sales. I have no idea how fast Lenovo is, but hey at least these folks are from Sydney. P14s G1 Intel

spddmen –
AU$200 to AU$500 –

Bruh… this dude sold an R50e for $130 US bucks… with a fucking XGA display. HOLY SHIT. It must suck to be an aussie, goddamn. There’s a few sellers who use a car for their background, and they sell sought after ThinkPads. All in all, I really don’t think they are making that much $$$ when it comes down to sourcing parts, replacing and finding good, working motherboards.

Sellers who didn’t make it because low ThinkPad inventory or stopped selling?

nikgn69 – German seller, but doesn’t have anything listed nor anything sold in the past 3 months of this post.

bryantgen-tech – idk if i mispelled the name, but i cant find anything at all…

goodwillrs – Wisconson & Illinois – 750K sold – oh wait people hate them… and looking at their sales… really not that many ThinkPads or even laptops for having 100K+ of items available. Auctions at least for the most part.