So I was doing my usual mid-year spring cleaning, clearing out all the old tech clutter in my room. Found my old 15-inch ASUS laptop sitting in the closet. Okay, fine, it’s about 5 years old, got some minor scratches on the casing, and the battery doesn’t hold charge without the plug. But hello, it’s still running a 10th Gen i7 with 16GB RAM and a decent SSD inside! It still boots up fast, screen completely fine, keyboard perfectly working. I even took the time to do a clean Windows reset and wiped my data so it’s ready to go.
Coincidentally, I hear the iconic “Karang Guni, Poh Paper!” horn blowing down my HDB corridor. I figure, eh, lazy to list on Carousell and deal with lowballers asking “Is this available?” 50 times, might as well just sell to uncle for $20-$30 clear space.
I open the door, wave uncle over. He rolls his trolley, takes one look at the laptop, doesn’t even press the power button or open the lid properly. He just weighs it in his hand like he’s buying choy sum at the wet market.
Then he looks at me with a super serious face and goes: “Two dollar.”
I thought I misheard, so I asked, “Uncle, two dollars or twenty dollars?”
He straight up look at me like I am the idiot here. “Two dollar lah! Nowadays nobody want old computer one! Heavy and big. I take back also need to throw away display screen, only can sell the small metal inside. Two dollar ALREADY VERY GOOD PRICE for you liao, other people I only give fifty cents!”
WALAO EH. Two dollars?! $2 in Singapore cannot even buy a plain Kopi-O Kosong at most hawker centres now! You offer me $2 for a fully working i7 machine, and then perform mental gymnastics to act like you doing me a national service? Might as well ask me to pay you token fee to carry it down the lift!
I just smiled, took my laptop back, and told him “Nevermind uncle, I keep to block my bedroom door.”
Honestly, Carousell lowballers are bad, but Karang Guni uncles operating on 1990s scrap metal pricing in 2026 hit different. Next time I’ll just list it on Carousell for $10 “Free Delivery” and let the “Can $5 deal today?” crowd fight it out. At least that one can buy a Cai Fan with fish.