Broken Hardware on Ebay? Why?

[Markess]

Being locked down these days, I have time to contemplate the universe....and search listings on Ebay. Something I've long wondered about was the number of listings for broken hardware. Not bulk lots of broken stuff for cheap, but rather listings for individual items that the seller wants decent money for.

Being a cheapskate, I sort by "lowest price", so usually see a few "For Parts or Not Working" items come up first. But, once prices climb into the range of "I'd buy that", I still see a lot of items listed as "not working". Not just "its untested, so I'm listing for parts", but the seller specifying that "this doesn't work".

Is there a market for these items that I'm missing? I can see whole desktops, servers, or laptops getting sold because there's got to be at least some components that are still good. I can see taking a chance on a BIOS locked or BIOS bricked item since there's folks who know how to deal with those. But I'm seeing dead for unknown reasons GPUs and motherboards for well over $100. Sure they were worth a lot when they were new, but now "they're dead, Jim." And its got to be hard to fix a dead spinning hard drive, SSD, or NIC.

Are these buyers just taking a, sometimes $100+, chance that its something they can fix? Or are there enough Ebay buyers out there able to replace/re-flow surface mount components that repair is really an option?

Just wondering.

 

[PigLover]

I've seen these listings breaking down into two groups. There are quite a few people selling things they believe to be not working, but useful for parts. They often don't have realistic pricing. The much more interesting are from large-scale recyclers/resellers that are fundamentally honest and just can't test the item. These are the more interesting ones. I've picked up some real gems from time to time, working perfectly, from recycle companies just couldn't tell if it worked or not.

 

[Markess]

I've seen these listings breaking down into two groups. There are quite a few people selling things they believe to be not working, but useful for parts. They often don't have realistic pricing. The much more interesting are from large-scale recyclers/resellers that are fundamentally honest and just can't test the item. These are the more interesting ones. I've picked up some real gems from time to time, working perfectly, from recycle companies just couldn't tell if it worked or not.

Yes, I certainly can see that second category. Especially when there's items with odd connectors that the seller doesn't have cabling/power for, or large lots of inexpensive items that would cost more in labor to test than they are worth. I've bought a decent amount of that sort of stuff from volume sellers before. In most of those cases, even when I had an item arrive DOA, I've usually gotten a replacement or a refund. Maybe those folks in the first category just never sell those items, or put them up in hopes that somebody bites before they dispose of them.

 

[oddball]

Even in the first category you can get great deals if you know what is "broken".

I've found about 90% of broken means:
1) missing flash
2) missing software

Those are easily fixed and then you have a fully functioning piece of hardware. Trick is to get it for a broken hardware price.

As for the recyclers, those are my favorite. Picked up a blade with dual Xeon Gold 6154 and 192GB of ram for $300, because they didn't have a chassis to test with. Blade was brand new, box destroyed (so lost/damaged shipping recycling), but works 100%.

 

[sth]

I’ve bought a few broken pieces now that just worked fine, I think it’s sellers who just want rid of stuff with less chance of come back etc.
Maybe they dont know how, or have time to test.

 

[Terry Kennedy]

Maybe they dont know how, or have time to test.

The problem is that eBay is littered with scammy sellers who DID test, but are listing and describing the item as "unable to test" for some reason. These sellers will cherry pick the working swappable parts out of bad units, so you expect you're buying (for example) a dual power supply Ethernet switch with hot-swap fans that has some sort of motherboard problem (perhaps corrupted flash), and you end up with a unit that has 2 bad power supplies and 3 out of 5 hot-swap fans broken.

Honest sellers might want to read my A few words of advice for used equipment sellers and A few more words of advice for used equipment sellers. The second one deals with the various types of "for parts or not working" and how to accurately describe the item.