Comment by serf
I just missed an ebay opportunity to get a dell r730xd with 12x 12tb drives for around 400 dollars.
if you're willing to wait and bid-snipe you can find deals like that routinely; just wait to find one with the size drives you want.
if you just need the drives similar lot sales are available for high power-on time zero errors enterprise drives. I bought a lot of 6x 6tb drives two weeks ago for 120 usd and they all worked fine. If you have the bay space and a software solutuon that lets you swap them in and out as needed without distorting data then there is a lot of 'hobby fun' to be had with managing a storage rack.
I have a a case with several 3.5" bays and a truenas server happily running. I've been running an all-flash array because I had a bright-eyed vision of the future. At this point a very cheap pile of unreliable spinning rust is exactly what I need. Thanks for the tips.