I’ve been thinking about dipping my toe in the homelabbing waters. Some parts have price history charts on sites like Camel Camel Camel and PC Part Picker, but I don’t know of any similar tool for used marketplaces like eBay, so I did my own manual data mining. Side note: If anyone knows of a more graceful way to conduct such searches, please let me know. I’m aware of web scraping tools such as Beautiful Soup, but such tools have always been just beyond my skill level to use on a whim like this.
I was looking specifically at US listings for the Lenovo ThinkCentre M720Q Tiny PC w/ i3-8100T or i5-8400T. I excluded “Or Best Offer” listings b/c I don’t think eBay shows the actual value of the offer that was ultimately accepted, they only show the original list price (somebody please correct me if I’m wrong about this). I only went back to the last couple days in July.
Figured I’d post the results of my research here in case it helps anybody else and as a sort of historical benchmark to compare against down the road.
eBay search link: https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=lenovo+thinkcentre+m720q&_sacat=0&LH_PrefLoc=1&rt=nc&LH_Sold=1
Sold listings:
| Date | List Price | Shipping | Total | Item Number | Specs | Power adapter included? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 08/09/26 | $144.99 | $12.20 | $157.19 | 158161591078 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 08/09/26 | $139.49 | $29.25 | $168.74 | 257662072228 | i3-8100T, 16 GB RAM, 128 GB SSD | Yes |
| 08/09/26 | $152.99 | $29.25 | $182.24 | 257662072228 | i3-8100T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 08/05/26 | $159.99 | $0.00 | $159.99 | 168591239929 | i5-8400T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 08/02/26 | $109.98 | $12.20 | $122.18 | 158122401518 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, No SSD | Yes |
| 08/01/26 | $129.99 | $0.00 | $129.99 | 187197840626 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, No SSD | No |
| 07/31/26 | $85.00 | $9.99 | $94.99 | 158140372263 | i5-8400T, 12 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | No |
| 07/31/26 | $83.00 | $9.99 | $92.99 | 158140372934 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | No |
| 07/30/26 | $174.99 | $0.00 | $174.99 | 127978949164 | i5-8400T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 07/29/26 | $149.99 | $23.36 | $173.35 | 168525633501 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 07/29/26 | $184.99 | $0.00 | $184.99 | 377368475701 | i5-8400T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 07/28/26 | $169.99 | $0.00 | $169.99 | 176600866964 | i5-8400T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 07/28/26 | $109.99 | $0.00 | $109.99 | 198526572309 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, No SSD | No |
| 07/25/26 | $109.99 | $0.00 | $109.99 | 198522265080 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, No SSD | No |
| 07/24/26 | $123.45 | $9.85 | $133.30 | 117320224241 | i5-8400T, 16 GB RAM, 256 GB SSD | Yes |
| 07/21/26 | $151.99 | $0.00 | $151.99 | 277569949684 | i5-8400T, 8 GB RAM, 240 GB SSD | Yes |
Keep an eye on Facebook marketplace. There’s occasional deals. I just missed picking up a 2060 for $100 because I was too slow.
Check out shopgoodwill.com, they occasionally have some good deals on old pc units.
Only downside is it’s usually an auction and quite frequently the costs will go above what you would pay on eBay. Also jawa.gg might have a couple options.this is awesome. I’m going the same shopping. did you generate this table? how?
I did it all manually. Opened up an eBay search and started filtering, scrolling, and clicking, entering the data into a spreadsheet as I went. When I was happy with the sample size, I copy-pasted from the spreadsheet into a text file, found/replaced tabs w/ pipes, and then copied into the Lemmy post. Not the most graceful or time efficient, but sometimes I don’t mind toiling in pursuit of sick deals on used electronics.
Thanks, this is useful
