The other day, I stopped into a local Amazon returns store on my lunch break. You probably know the type: chaotically overflowing other people's returned orders, with half-open boxes scattered about in huge bins. It's like some kind of post-apocalyptic ball pit game show, where you might find something worthwhile if you wade through enough discarded shelving kits, no-name iPhone cases, and shoe insoles. This particular store is only a few months old, and I'd visited a few times without finding much (other than a pair of insoles, which I needed because I walk 9-10 miles a day).
On this trip, the first day after a weekly restock, when everything in the bins costs $10, I managed to find a roll of Creality 3D printer PLA filament. That's not a huge discount over its typical Amazon sale price, but I happened to need a new spool for my Anycubic printer, and I was a few blocks from home, so this saved me the hassle of ordering. After a few more minutes pawing through returns, I hadn't found anything else and went up to pay. But there was a line, and I wound up waiting at the corner of one of the closest bins to the register. Killing time, I idly dug around while I waited, and soon spotted the familiar blue of an Intel CPU box. I flipped it over and saw an i7-14700 sticker!
Could I really have just found the frequency-locked version of Intel's last-generation flagship for $10? And if so, had someone returned it because of the notorious instability issues? Something else? I could see the CPU in its plastic clamshell through the cardboard window. The back looked OK, but the top was covered in thermal paste.
