I’ve been trying to find Thinkpad laptops with specifications equivalent to, or better than my old Ideapad with i5-8265U. So far, I’ve only been using Ebay. Unless explicitly mentioned, all prices are without shipping charges. This time, I’ve restricted myself to the following rules:

• Assume +100$ for all product (international shipping)
• Look for 8th, 9th and 10th gen Intel processors, and 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen AMD processors.
• 8 (assuming SODIMM is free for another 8GB)/16/32GB of RAM
• 256GB (if device is cheap, I can upgrade it myself)/512GB/1TB
• Pick devices with 8th gen Intel processors under 200$
• Pick devices with 9th gen Intel and 1st gen Ryzen processors under 250$
• Pick devices with 10th gen Intel and 2nd/3rd gen Ryzen processors under 300$
• Assume an extra 50-100$ for workstation dGPU
• Do not buy anything higher than 450$ (with shipping price included)

However, to my surprise, 8th gen devices are still being sold around 250-350$, 9th gen devices and almost every Ryzen-based devices are non-existent, and 10th gen devices are surprisingly the same or lower than 8th gen, but their prices get inflated after auction - perhaps by shill bidding bots.

I also can’t figure out this - why are there no listings from Europe or Middle East? Shipping from America is too expensive (although way cheaper that the local listings here).

How can I get better for finding used/refurbished/renewed Thinkpad?