(This is my twenty-ninth post in a series of entries I’m using to participate in Blaugust for 2026.)
(TL;DR: College Surplus stores are neat!)
I like a lot (though not all) of what I see from that specific channel. They have some neat ideas and while they don’t explain every step they at least go over enough to let me know if I should research further to do a thing myself.
This time around, I’d not suggest the average person try what they did, because they aren’t average people.
Part of the premise of this particular video has them going to Facebook Marketplace to get parts to build a computer and/or a fully built computer that they can upgrade. This involved getting into the guts of the machine, diagnosing problems and bottlenecks, and making sure that the new parts are actual improvements.
For them, it seems trivial.
For me, who has built a few computers in my day, it would be a challenge.
For the average person who needs to go this route because they cannot afford a computer any other way, this is a lot of additional work with no guaranteed payoff, meaning that money could just go down the drain.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled when someone with an interest gets into computer building and maintenance. I think it’s a neat hobby that can with a little more work become a source of income.
I am the only person in my family who thinks this is neat, and one of them has an engineering degree. Do I think they could manage it? Yes! There’s enough instructions out there and my family members tend to have decent critical thinking skills.
… But that’s not how they want to spend their time, and for several of them they don’t have the time to spend doing this.
I’ve had the luxury of having enough income and leisure time to do what I’ve done. If someone doesn’t have both of those I will not fault them for going a different route.
So what options are left?
Sadly, not a ton of good ones. As much a fan as I am of thrift stores, it’s my experiences (some hard-earned) that keep me from getting a lemon. That took time. As much as I despise Meta, I’ve heard good things about deals found there, but that takes more time and can include more risks.
That leaves most thinking their only choices are the big online stores like Amazon, Woot (which is Amazon’s store for refurbished, open box, and clearance items), and NewEgg. I confess that back in the day before I kicked the habit of sending money for Bezos’ yacht, I got more than one decent machine from Woot – most of which are still working just fine today, including a couple that are over a decade old. If you’re low on cash and time, I wouldn’t blame you for using Woot even if I have enough privilege to avoid it.
But there’s another neat one: Surplus Stores.
There’s a few like this, I’m sure, but I found out these exist when a friend told me about her local university’s outlet for selling surplus and used items.
Can I get better deals from Goodwill’s online auctions? Absolutely, but that takes time and luck.
Compare that to MSU’s store, where I can just go to the Desktop category and buy a desktop.
It’s not perfect. You still need to read the descriptions to make sure you know what you’re getting. (That $20 computer with 16GB of RAM sounds great, but it’s that cheap because you need to install a hard drive and also the processor’s old enough and low power enough that the RAM won’t be the bottleneck for how fast it’s running.) But there’s no bidding wars and a lot of these should work out of the box for way less than what Switch & Click paid for their example computer in their video.
If it wasn’t for how much I’ve spent on back-to-school items already, I’d be inclined to get one or two of these myself.
You know…
Just in case I need them.