I bought a pre-owned one a few years back for $425 on eBay. Except it was clear once I got it that no one had ever used it. If you look, there are a lot of business-class laptops on eBay that have minimal usage.
My Thinkpad is not as fast as the latest and greatest ones, but it's a pretty sweet device and I'm happy with the purchase.
I am honestly astonished at how bad hardware companies are at incrementally improving their products. Every new "improvement" (new CPU) comes with a huge completely-unrelated drawback for no reason (horrible keyboard, touchbar, .......)
My Thinkpad is not as fast as the latest and greatest ones, but it's a pretty sweet device and I'm happy with the purchase.