I’ve been searching for a used Thinkpad for so long, and the shipping price from the USA is ridiculously high between 80-120$, so I’ve been looking for any European options on eBay.
I came across a Thinkpad X395 from 2019, with AMD Ryzen 5 3500U, 16GB of RAM and a measly 265GB of space. On rough estimates, thus exact build will be sold for 150-250$ in the USA, plus the shipping cost. Now, this laptop is from Slovenia, at a whopping 900£, plus the 40-60£ shipping.
Now, what’s with this ridiculous pricing for an almost 6-year-old device? Are electronics sold in Slovenia so expensive that they are barely affected by yearly depreciation?
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Electronics in Eastern Europe are generally more expensive than Western Europe or the USA since the supply chains are longer. You can find stuff in Germany at 60-80% of what it costs in my country, but your price is outrageous and most likely some sort of scam
I don’t think the European second hand market is quite as prolific as the American one. Prices stay up as a result.
Many of these marketplaces are also full of companies putting their ads up, often offering new/nearly new products which will bring in significantly more than second hand stuff.
Many countries have their own ebay alternatives as well, and in some places Facebook is the only place to get any deals on second hand stuff. Google suggests bolha.com is where Slovenians go for second hand stuff, for instance. Here’s a second hand ThinkPad for a much more reasonable price. Local second hand sites will often refuse to ship internationally, though, that’s something I’ve only seen done for expensive stuff (i.e. the price you were quoted). Personally, I see eBay as a website I would only ever visit if I wanted to import something cheap from the USA or maybe the UK.
Another issue with laptops specifically is that many European countries have specific (non-US) keyboard layouts, reducing the supply. Compared to all ThinkPads sold, only a small amount of them have a dedicated Đ/đ key, so the price can stay up for longer than you may expect. Newer, faster hardware is nice, but it’s rather useless if you can’t type your name on it!
I’ve found lots of cheap stuff on eBay in Germany. Maybe but quite as cheap as in the US but definitely nowhere near as bad as this.
Are European eBay sellers blocked in Asia? For some reason, all I can see are USA-only laptops. Maybe a few Italian and Slovakian ones, which are again, priced ridiculously. So far, I’ve not come across even a single seller from German.
Have you checked out any other thinkpad? I’m not in Slovenia but my local price comparison website only shows upgrades for this one in stock, and the laptop itself only from a refurbishing place. Maybe this thing is just out of stock.
Most of the Thinkpads are from the USA on eBay, so there’s really not a lot of options for used/refurbished products from European countries in general. I’d love to use any other platform that ships their products to South Asia.
I’m not saying you should buy a refurbished one, I’m saying I couldn’t buy a new one locally because it’s not in stock. Have you tried other laptops?
Not really. So far, I’ve been looking for the Thinkpad T14 (T4xx), the X13 (X3xx), the P14s, the P1 and the X1 extreme. But most of them were either out of my budget, or quite outdated
Perhaps the seller has not updated the listing since 2018?
I’ve messaged them, and the least they’re willing to go down is 760£, which is still quite a lot for a 1st gen Ryzen mobile processor.
Well, don’t buy it.
