Stand at the moment of decision and the choice looks obvious. A used (tokunbo or refurbished) machine on a US or UK marketplace might be priced at a fraction of its brand-new equivalent. Your instinct says take the saving and run. But the price on the listing is not the price you pay — and it is certainly not the cost you carry. By the time a PC clears Apapa and sits on your desk in Lagos, the cheap option and the expensive option have both grown extra costs that the seller's page never mentioned.
This article does the honest sum. We are not rehashing the broader emotional debate of new versus used — our companion piece on tokunbo versus brand-new PCs in Nigeria covers that ground. Here we are strictly accountants: once you stack shipping, the customs duty and assessed charges, near-term repairs and a fair risk premium onto each route, which one genuinely costs less? The answer is more interesting — and less one-sided — than the headline price gap suggests.
The headline trade you are actually making
Strip away the detail and every used-versus-new import decision is the same bargain. Used buys you a much lower upfront price in exchange for an unknown history, little or no warranty and a higher chance that something is worn, tired or about to fail. New buys you a known condition, a manufacturer warranty and genuine peace of mind, in exchange for paying considerably more on day one.
That trade is real, but it is not the whole picture, because both sides of it change once the item crosses an ocean and a customs barrier. A warranty you cannot easily claim from Lagos is worth less than the same warranty in London. A worn part that would be a cheap fix at home becomes an expensive, slow ordeal when the seller is six thousand kilometres away. So the question is never just "which is cheaper to buy?" — it is "which is cheaper to own, here, after import?"
Why customs treats a used machine differently
There is a genuine duty advantage to importing used, and it is worth understanding precisely so you neither over- nor under-estimate it. Customs valuation generally assesses a used item at a lower value than its new equivalent, because it is, plainly, worth less. A lower assessed value can mean a lower duty figure, since the stacked charges are calculated on that value.
But two caveats shrink the saving. First, used imports can attract more scrutiny on age and condition, and the way an item is classified affects the rate applied — our guide to HS codes for PC components explains why classification, not just declared price, drives what you owe. Second, you still pay the full stack of charges — duty, levy, VAT and the rest — on whatever assessed value lands. So the duty saving on used is real, but it is a saving on a percentage of a lower number, not a free pass. It is almost always far smaller than the gap between the used and new sticker prices.
Shipping does not care what your PC cost
Here is the cost that quietly punishes the cheap option. Shipping and import handling are driven by weight, size and route — not by the value of the box. A mid-tower weighs roughly the same whether it holds a tired second-hand build or a pristine new one, so the freight bill is broadly similar for both.
The consequence is proportional, not absolute. On an expensive new machine, shipping is a modest slice of the total. On a cheap tokunbo find, that same fixed shipping cost can be a large fraction of everything you spend — sometimes rivalling the price of the machine itself. Our walkthrough of importing a PC from the US or UK and the comparison of forwarders and importation services both show how to keep that figure honest, but the principle stands: the cheaper the machine, the more shipping erodes the bargain.
The hidden costs that follow a used machine home
These are the line items that never appear on the listing and that turn a great-looking deal into a mediocre one. Budget for them before you buy, not after:
- No warranty cover — you personally carry the repair risk from the moment it arrives, with no maker to fall back on.
- Worn consumables and parts — laptop batteries, fans, thermal paste and drive wear may all be near the end of their life, meaning near-term replacement spending you did not plan for.
- Condition you cannot verify remotely — you usually cannot power on and test the machine before it ships, so you are trusting photographs and a stranger's description.
- A dead-on-arrival nightmare — a used part that fails in transit or on first boot is hard, slow or impossible to return across borders, as our guide to returning a faulty part to an overseas seller makes painfully clear.
The first defence against most of this is simply demanding proof before money changes hands. Our second-hand gaming PC buying checklist lists exactly what to insist on — benchmark screenshots, serial numbers, photos of internals — so you are not buying entirely blind.
When used genuinely wins, and when new does
Neither route is universally right. The honest answer depends on your budget, the specific model and how much risk you can absorb. Used tends to win when:
- Your budget is genuinely tight and a new machine is simply out of reach.
- You can verify condition properly, or you are buying from a reputable refurbisher who offers at least some guarantee.
- The specific model is known to age well and hold up reliably second-hand.
- The upfront saving stays large even after you subtract likely repairs and a fair risk premium.
New tends to win when:
- You want a warranty and predictable reliability above all else.
- The used saving gets eaten by the cost of replacing worn parts and absorbing repair risk.
- It is a mission-critical machine — for work, study or income — where downtime is expensive.
- The used market for that particular item is dodgy, flooded with fakes or hard to verify.
The framework: add up everything, then compare
To decide properly, do not compare sticker prices. Compare two complete totals. For the used route, add the used price, plus shipping, plus the (lower) duty and assessed charges, plus the likely cost of near-term repairs and replacements, plus a sensible risk premium for the things that might go wrong. For the new route, add the new price, plus shipping, plus the (higher) duty and charges — and then credit yourself the warranty and peace of mind, which have real, if unpriced, value.
Set those two totals side by side. Very often the used machine still wins, and comfortably so — that is why tokunbo remains popular for good reason. But sometimes, once the worn battery, the dead fan and the impossible-to-return drive are all counted, the gap narrows to the point where new is the smarter spend. The framework does not pick a side for you. It just stops the sticker price from picking for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does importing used really lower my customs duty? It usually lowers the assessed value, and since charges are calculated on that value, the duty figure can come down. But you still pay the full stack of charges on whatever value lands, and used items can draw extra scrutiny — so the saving is real yet much smaller than the price gap between used and new.
Is shipping cheaper for a used PC? No. Freight is priced by weight, size and route, not by what the machine cost. A used and a new tower of similar size ship for broadly the same amount, which means shipping is a far bigger proportion of a cheap tokunbo machine's total cost than of a new one's.
What is the single biggest risk with importing used? Being unable to verify or return the item. You usually cannot test a used machine before it ships, and a dead-on-arrival unit is extremely hard to return across borders. Buying from a reputable refurbisher with a guarantee, and demanding proof of condition upfront, is the only real defence.
The One Thing to Remember
The cheapest machine to buy is rarely the cheapest machine to own. A tokunbo listing wins the sticker-price contest before shipping, duty, worn parts and risk have had their say — and sometimes it still wins after all of them, which is exactly why so many Nigerians import used with confidence. The discipline is simply to add up the full landed cost of each route, honestly, including the repairs you can already see coming, and then let the two totals — not the headline price — make the call.
Not sure which route fits your budget and your model? Start with our configurator to price a clean, warrantied new build for comparison, then contact us with the used listing you are eyeing — we will help you run the honest total-cost sum on both before you commit a single naira.