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[TerryRitchie]

I like the idea of buying government computers and reselling them. You've given me an idea for a hobby, Terry. Thank you.

I've done it a few times when I can find the deals like the one I described. These systems typically have the hard drive pulled and won't be included. But another trick is to search eBay for data centers that are selling off their 3 year old hard drives in quantity for dirt cheap. These are top of the line mechanical drives that will last for years under normal use.

This was my breakdown:

$75 for 22 computers
$35 for 25 WD Black 500GB SATA hard drives
$25 for a large bag of Dell hard drive screws (yeah, they use weird screws that slide into rails to hold the drives in, can be found on eBay cheap).
       (when the municipalities pull the drives they never take the screws off the drives)
$40 gas to travel there and back
$10 approx packing tape
$0  about 1 hour time each system to physically clean each one and install the hard drive and OS (pro tip: install OS on one drive, clone to the rest, in my case it was PopOS)

That's roughly $8 invested into each system. eBay's cut on each sale was about $8 as well. $715 profit on 21 systems all said and done (buyers paid for shipping). Total time from picking them up to selling last one off about 2 weeks. I could have easily sold them for twice as much but I wanted to move them quickly (see understanding wife below).

Another pro tip: Visit furniture and rent-to-own stores for large chunks of free styrofoam. Visit any local store(s) for free boxes.

Oh, also, if married, have a wife that is understanding when one of the rooms in the house becomes a temporary way station for wayward computers.