Have you made contact with the RPi foundation? If you registered an interest for a larger number and state your educational goals they may well be able to help you out.
What are you looking to do with them out of interest?
But that's the thing, I don't need hundreds, I just need five or ten, so it's just amateur usage but one doesn't work (one could easily fry while experimenting).
I just make weird things out of them. My latest one is an RC car that I was hoping could get some mapping software onto, and turn fully autonomous, although an ESP8266 talking to a laptop is acceptable (and what I'm currently doing).
What are you looking to do with them out of interest?