Surplus can be fun, but here are some advice notes:

 

-Virtually no machines are complete.  Hard discs especially tend to be pulled.  Only "full" box I ever got was a HP 712/60, and probably because nobody could figure out how to strip it.

 

For cases also inspect for missing drive carriers and such.  I'd rather buy a $5 case at Surplus than a new $30 one, but often drive carriers and rails disappear

 

-Cables you'd want to test with are rarely handy.  If you have a VGA->Sun adapter cable, it might be worth bringing along to test the dozens of Sun monitors always present

 

-Don't bother for desks.  I wanted a metal desk (wood desk strains under weight of monitor), and price was USD 150+

 

-Bear in mind a slope outside front door, for when you're shoving a cart with 83kg of

equipment on it

 

-Recognize size limits of your vehicle.  I did a nasty number on the interior of my car when I retrieved an IBM 3174-1L terminal controller