Two used Intel Xeon processors showed up in my eBay watch list.
Each one ran at 3.06 GHz with a megabyte of cache. That was enough to get my attention. The notice only says I watched the auction. It does not say I bid or bought them.
I was running Windows and Linux systems at SimAuthor and building plenty of my own hardware outside work. Used server parts were the cheap way to get a multiprocessor lab, try another operating system, or build a machine without waiting for a company project.
Cheap did not mean good. A few months earlier I had gone through two failed Western Digital Raptor drives from the same seller. Hardware had to pass a test before it became useful.
The listing does not name a motherboard, chassis, or project. The pair might have been for my rack, a Praxis job, or nothing beyond watching the price.
Two Xeons. One auction. No purchase receipt with the notice.
I was doing this kind of price check all the time. SimAuthor gave me production responsibility during the day. The used market gave me a way to keep building outside the office, where I could break a machine without taking down somebody else's work.
A processor listing was only the start. The sockets had to match. The board needed the right chipset and memory. The power and cooling had to make sense. Two cheap CPUs were not cheap if every other part had to be replaced.
Nothing in the notice says which of those pieces I already had. It also does not say the final auction price. The honest status stays where eBay left it: watching.