In some places there are entire wholesale businesses that operate on this model. For instance, in Austin there is a place you can go that resells pretty much every office furniture that you can get from cannibalizing these auctions. http://www.topstexas.com/

They don’t always have the color you want, but I got a basically new condition Steelcase Leap there for less than half of what it retails for.

Hah yeah bought my Arron at Tops almost a decade ago. If anyone is in the Austin area, I would highly recommend checking them out if only to get a feel for the range of high-end inventory.

How do you find those auctions? Is there a website with a schedule of them?

Google for your local area, there are like 100's of these sites in the UK in fact there are sites that charge you money just to send you a list of bankruptcy, police, customs seizures etc. auctions.

I've also had decent luck on Craigslist. (ymmv, my Craigslist is close enough to SV where the availability is there)

Out of interest, how do you find such auctions in the UK?

Honestly I used google e.g. https://www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auction-catalogues/bpi-as...

Just search for office auctions UK, I don't remember which of the sites I finally used to get the desk from I went through about 10 of those.

P.S. Just be careful of the sites that charge you money for getting a collections of listings, these have their value for resellers but not for casual buyers.