Hit 100 flips on a $40 pawn shop laptop and it actually scared me

I flip used laptops on the side and passed 100 sales last Friday, which sounds fine until you realize 40 of those came from the same pawn shop in Spokane. Their testing is terrible, I've found three units with swollen batteries that they swore were 'gently used.' Anyone else tracking their resale numbers like this, or am I just turning into a spreadsheet guy?

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jakep241mo ago

Tbh that spreadsheet energy is real, I track every flip in a notes app on my phone and it got way too specific last year. Found a pawn shop in Portland that sold me a dead motherboard twice, same model, both times they swore it was tested. Definitely not alone on this, once you see the pattern you can't unsee it.

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henryreed1mo ago

...and honestly @jakep24, the notes app thing is the only way I stay sane doing this. I've got one called "dont buy this again" and it's just a list of every sketchy seller I've run into. That pawn shop move is brutal though, getting burned twice on the same board is next level. I had a guy on Craigslist sell me a "working" GPU that turned out to be pulled from a mining rig and it died after like three days. I kept the receipt though and he actually took it back, but only after I showed up at his door with a printed screenshot of the listing. Now I record every test bench run on my phone before I hand over cash, and if they get weird about it, I just walk. The pattern is definitely real, once you start tracking this stuff you realize half the "tested" gear out there is just someone else's problem they're trying to pass along.

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