Try to source them refurbished or on ebay with bad batteries. I bought 3 from ebay that were server based UPS that just needed new batteries and i picked them up off amazon for a few dollars each, i even went to my local thrift stores and picked up a handful of them for a few dollars and half of them even worked, just needed fresh batteries. The ones i got from local thrift stores i built custom lithium batteries from 18650 cells, i have been collecting thousands of them over time because i was planning to build a DIY tesla powerwall with them along with build battery packs for my Catrike bicycle that i converted to electric assist, i get them free from thrift stores, hardware stores from the recycle bin just ask the store managers, and colleges. The most i got from thrift stores because when someone donates a laptio they cant resell it, so it gets scrapped and disassembled and they pay for someone to take the batteries away.

This is some of the batteries i got last month from going around and asking politely from many locations and picking up some from locations that told me they would place them to the side for me...


Here are some cells im still slowly testing out, i bought 4 tester/chargers units a while back that allows me to test 16 cells at a time, so its only time to test them, i put them on the test and forget about them really and come back when i remember about them, write the capacity on the side of the cell and move on, i store them in bins based on the capacity so my wall cells i assemble have the highest capacity cells. I have probably close to 40,000 cells assembled in my diy powerwall to date that ive never purchased...