we were fortunate enough a month or so ago to score big when a local hosting/IT company went out of business and left all their gear behind in the leased space. Apparently (the scuttlebutt rumors say) there were some 'gray' areas in their business practices and software licensing and were afraid someone (like an ex-employee who left in a huff) had dropped the dime on them, so instead of working through the mess and getting compliant/legal, they decided to just drop and run (not too far though, the former owner is still in his $1 million house within a long walk of the business)
anyway, we had bought a couple moving truck loads of furniture at is-it-on-fire-sale prices and had bid on a bunch of servers, rack, ups, etc but were told the building owners (not the same as the business owner) were still trying to do the right thing and contact the lease holders of these machines which have been sitting since August when the business closed (and likely had leases that had not been paid on for months before that).
Yesterday i got the call, the building owner's lawyers have said enough time has elapsed that the leasing companies who have not made contact/arrangements to get their kit are out of luck and the computer stuff can be sold off, and we were the one and only bid for most of it. happy me!
Today i went and picked up a load and will have to make arrangements to get the rest when i have help and a truck (what is left in the building is racks and UPSs, plus a few desks). Anyway, i ended up with a 3 cisco switches (i will have to check model numbers later, but did see fiber ports), 3 Lenovo T520 laptops, a funky-big Asus gaming laptop, 2 SANs, and 6 dell servers with all their RAM slots full.
Once i get stuff tested and working we will finally be able to fix some long time nagging annoyances (bad practices but made to work with the budget we have (ie: zero!) types of things)
there is still an IBM AS400 sitting there as well, and they have been unable to get IBM to come and pick it up, we could have taken it for a song also, but won't.