Slashdot Mirror
Great Surplus Stores?
An old friend of mine, Todd San Martin, passed on a link to me of a great surplus place in Orlando that has lots of old nasa gear and more, and it made me think that it's probably time to talk about great surplus shops again. Not just the aforementioned skycraft or the well known Weird Stuff , although feel free to dicuss those too, but I thought it would make a cool post as a jumping off point for people to talk about their favorite shops especially those near aerospace facilities, both online and off.
This place has everything an electronics nut could want. And more.
Not sure if they have an online presence. It wouldn't matter. Most of the fun is going there and scouring through the thousands of bins full of assorted electronic components. Whenever I've needed parts for any electronic project I have never failed to find the parts at Active Surplus.
Is that a real poncho? I mean, is that a Mexican poncho or is that a Sears poncho?
http://www.meci.com/ You want a generator? They got that. You want a Xerox Star? They've had 'em. You want an AT&T unix workstation from god knows when? They got 'em. Need 10Kv capacitors? Sure! Need a freezer? No, no, I mean a WALK IN FREEZER! They GOT THAT? Mannequin parts? THAT TOO!
I am dictator^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H beloved leader of a Middle Eastern country, and am sick and tired of the damn Shi'ites rebelling. I'm looking for a place where I can find reasonably priced SCUD missiles a small amount of Nerve Gas (Sarin would do nicely), and possilbly a small nuclear reactor with which I could power my underground bunker - just in case the US decides I'm next. Any suggestions?
1) Check "Post Anonymously"
2) Click "Submit"
Disclaimer: I did not RTFA.
Around where I live the state holds an auction every week. You can get some great hardware if you're a geek there. Older AIX mainframes, SPARC-III's, etc.
I bought 12 Pentium-2's there for $50 total (no monitors). Also bought a bunch of Cisco 2501s on the cheap there as well (I think they went for 1/pop, no one else bid on them).
Basic procedure was:
Show up, see equipment, submit a sealed bid, get contacted within a day, go pay, go pick up your hardware.
If you live in a state capitol here in the US of A, check to see if they have auctions. If they do, go there, greatest thing next to sliced bread.
The key to the enjoyment of pop music is to replace any instance of "love" with "C.H.U.D."
If you are near Chicago or Milwalkee, check out American Science & Surplus for all of your unneeded science surplus stuff.
I have been to the Chicago store and wandered around for a good couple of hours. I need to get to the smaller store near Fermilab (although I have heard it is not as big)
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
... is about the only electronics surplus outfit in the Seattle area, as far as I'm aware.
In fact, Vetco is about the only decent electronic-component reseller of any kind around here, now that Future-Active Electronics has wisely decided that only Canadians are interested in buying electronic parts.
The last time I was in Vetco, they were planning to expand their overall component inventory greatly to pick up some of the slack from the former Active Electronics store just up the road. Go buy some stuff from them now so they don't vanish too!
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
As much as RadioShack sucks, if you know how to shop them, they will devalue most of their products to ridiculously low amounts at a steady pace. When I used to work there, we would on slow days, check the "devalued list" and find everything that has been devalued below 99 cents. These could all be products which had at one time been very expensive, upwards of hundreds of dollars. Eventually they make it down to the 99, 49 and even 0 cents range. (At 0, we would only have to check them out, pay nothing and take it home with us) Rarely would this produce anything really useful, but we got some interesting things, usually in surplus (a box of 50 old leather cell phone pouches that still kinda fit our modern cells for 1 cent each, originally 69.99) , various universal remotes for 49 cents each. We even found a couple old analog cell phones for 99c. My friend got a box of 50 mini butane torches for 0 cents each! Note: good luck finding a way to do this in store, but stuff used to appear on the website occasionally as "web specials"
99, 49 and 0 cents - almost what radioshack merchandise is worth
Boeing surplus in Kent, Washington.
a il /
You can get anything from an outdated computer to slightly used machine tools to airline seats to chunks of titanium.
http://www.boeing.com/assocproducts/surplus/ret
I think HSC Electronic Supply is fairly well known around here, they mostly sell electronic components, but they have a lot of other stuff too.
I always check there first when I need a new computer power supply or keyboard, or if I want a card that doesn't need to be the newest. I dunno if it'd be worth it if I had to go through mail-order tho.
But, this is the first thing that came to mind. http://www.surplusrifle.com . They themselves don't actually sell rifles, but have provided me with a lot of fun information about old WWII and earlier rifles that are still available.
I'm really geeked really, because I picked up in a 1946 M44 Soviet rifle last weekend. Unissued... never been fired. The weapon's been around for 56 years wrapped up in paper and passed around but never actually handled, cleaned, and fired. I'm geeked... really geeked. I've taken it apart a few times, cleaned greasy goop out of it for about 6 hours, and just totally enjoyed the whole process. I'm hoping this weekend, weather permitting, I'll get to take it out and finally test the thing out.
I tell ya what... I got that thing home, tore the wax paper protection and twine off it, then the underlying paper wrap, rubbed a cloth over it to get some extra grease off and was amazed. Here is an unfired Soviet weapon with a hammer and sicle on it. It's almost like finding a PDP-11 at a gargage sale to me... that had never been used. Granted, an unused PDP-11 doesn't exist; but it's almost that "neat" to me. Fifty six years sitting in a storage bin and I'll be the first human being to fire it.. how neat and geeky is that?
I can pull it apart and inspect the workmanship that went into it so long ago. The engineering that has gone into making it over the yers before it's actual production... the circumstances that lead to it's creation and it's reason for being stuck in a bin for so long. Totally geeky to me.
Granted, I'm going to use it to punch holes in inatimate objects rather than try and make a Beowulf cluster out of them... but it's still a huge amount of fun.
While not necessarily Surplus, they do normally have alot of strange stuff turn up (including a puppet/costume used to make the movie Labyrinth). They normally have thousands of CD's, tons of clothing, lots and lots of camera equipment, camping stuff, random computer stuff (got a IBM3725 terminal there for $5 couple years back, and a 24port cabletron management switch for $90) and other junk. I usually go by there a couple times a year just to see what turns up.
TM
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
anything even REMOTELY similar in Vancouver?
One place comes to mind... Cal's Computer Warehouse on the north side of Grandview Highway west of Costco and east of Superstore. Open late 7 days per week. Wacky place. Some new product but mostly surplus and used. Hardware and software by the scoopful. NICs, audio cards, cables, adaptors, and monitors galore. I picked up a bunch of Wyse 60s there once (they dozens to sift through) for a team of programmers' serial debug terminals. Prices are so-so, but they've been willing to haggle. There's also an old microcomputer museum in the back with some treasures that aren't for sale. Check it out.
SFU used to have science & tech equipment auctions once in a while. UBC might also.
Alas, the Bloomington store is no more - I went there recently and there was just a hole in the ground. I guess my evil Teddy Ruxpin automaton finally took over the store, drilled a hole in space-time and destroyed it.
You can see some of my (admittedly crummy :) handiwork at the St. Paul or Fridley store - just look for the display with the dozen car speakers attached to a metal screen.
The nice thing about Ax-man surplus is that you can find other things there too; marbles, wooden blocks, plastic bits, nuts and bolts, baby doll heads, stepper motors, flat files, chrome trash cans, prom dresses, tons of laboratory glassware, aluminum stock, rollerblade wheels, nylon washers and blocks, remote control car starters, 500 gallon tanks, and really nice employees who are always full of suggestions for your project/halloween costume/plans for world domination.
I worked there for 2 plus years, and have yet to have a job that challenged my brain and body like Ax-man. It's like a museum where the gift shop is all around you. If you are in the cities, it's a must see! Say hi to David and Bill :)
I've been going to "Freddie's" (Active Surplus for the uninitiated) since I was about 5. I'm now 28. Freddie was one of a big handful of electronics surplus stores in the late 70's/early 80's on what is now a *much* different Queen St. West strip. The earliest computer stores in Toronto were all on Queen St, from McCaul (by the City TV building) to Bathurst, about a kilometer over.
Freddie always (and still does) specialized in surplus junk, but the store used to be divided half-and-half with a double-door sized entranceway between them. One half, resistors, capacitors, all neatly sorted in cardboard bins (as they are today), and random electronic type junk. The other half, power tools, sheetmetal stuff, mechanical junk of all sorts. Nowadays it's mostly resistors, caps, discreet parts, and bizarre job lots of strange old electronic throwaways. You think it's interesting now? Try a quarter century ago!
Anyways, along with Freddie, there was Jackson, who I only knew as such (my Dad would know his full name, I was like 5-10 yrs old), who had a huge shop on McCaul St, a bit bigger than the electronics side of Freddies, but more oriented to complete bits of electronic junk, rather than discreet parts. He closed down late 80's if I recall, and I think he's somewhere in Vancouver now.
Electronics surplus wasn't the only game in Toronto in the 70's though. My Dad was one of the first people to bring in Apple ][+ clone motherboards, with an outfit called Aftek, which was on Queen more towards the Bathurst side. Nazir, the character behind Aftek, had his guys physically trace an Apple motherboard, with pencil and tracing paper, and with parts from Active Surplus, Dad and I soldered the chip sockets and resistors by hand in our basement.
I was still in the single digits at the time, and even before that, at 4 1/2, we had built a ZX81 kit which was bought from Active Electronics (not Active Surplus), about 10 doors east of Freddies.
That whole stretch of Queen was the introduction of personal computers to Toronto, and probably in a large way, to Canada. From East to West, Active Electronics, "Joe", who ran Perfect Electronics (I think it was called that... it's still there, but it's now a PC white-box and accessory shop), Active Surplus, albeit slightly changed but with the same guys behind the counter, Aftek, long gone although Nazir is still a friend of the family and still in computers, and then "Albert's", or "Supremetronics". He was at the corner of Spadina and Queen, and stuck it out for the longest time, I think he was nearly 70 when he closed up shop a few years ago.
I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy of all this... I was so young it's all blurry memories and urban legends to me now.
There's no more hand-soldering of basement-etched cloned motherboards, but that stretch of Queen St., and a bunch of guys who *loved* collecting junk (you should see my Dad's garage and basement!), and had a real passion for these "new computer things", introduced a big city to a big industry.
They were the pioneers of gadgetry in Toronto, and a big bunch of idols and friends in my childhood.
Check out http://www.drms.dla.mil/newsales/ for information on US Dept of Defense surplus sales. In my former life in the military, I used to go to the surplus warehouse regularly to look for electronics. You could get a pallet of ~3 year old PCs for under $100 sometimes, and if you open these babies up, sometimes you will find some nice upgrade parts in them (large, newer harddrives, memory, etc...). One time I bid on a sale lot of office equipment ( I wanted a couple of filing cabinets). I won the bid for under $150...but then I realized I needed a full sized UHaul to move all the stuff. Had to have my own surplus sale after I got all that stuff (mostly desks and cabinets) to my house.
guys! There's more to fun than just electronics, real surplus stores also got military surplus. Geez I had so much fun at the old real army/navy stores used to be around. When I was a kid you'd go in one they had freeking bazookas hanging on the wall and torpedoes hanging from the ceiling and carried REAL STUFF. Oh man it was neat, I bet 3/4's of the stuff now is politically incorrect. sigh. Oh well, the better ones:
here's some larger ones with online presence:
http://www.majorsurplusnsurvival.com/
check this one out, some amazing stuff
http://www.colemans.com/
Now this isn't a surplus place, but it's pretty spiffy. Catalog that carries Xtreme low tech but functional devices, thing geek stuff for the amish, too cool, check it out
http://www.lehmans.com/
There used to be and might still exist an atlanta area electronics and stuff surplus stores called "Peachtree Salvage", they used to have several stores, I looked on google but didn't find a link that looked good, and it's been a few years since I have been to one,or atlanta for that matter, but if they still exist they had tons of odd stuff
I have been going there for over thirty years and I've noted a few things that people new to the store should be aware of to make their experience a positive one:
- Go there often - at least once a month. Make sure the guys behind the counter know your face by asking not stupid questions. A "not stupid" question is "Where can I find geared motors?", not "what does a resistor do?". They don't expect their customers to know everything, but there is a certain basic level of knowledge and intelligence expected before somebody can walk in the doors.
- As part of the previous point, accept that everything there is "ASIS" unless they tell you otherwise. Asking what "ASIS" means will get an explanation geared for somebody with an IQ less than 50 that is delivered at a LOUD volume with questions afterward to make sure you understand what you have been told. Nothing pisses them off more than somebody bringing back an old cassette drive transport, demanding their money back because a pinion gear is missing inside it. They'll generally let (and help) you test stuff if it's reasonable to do and there isn't a huge lineup at the counter.
- Don't ask complex questions between 11:30 AM and 2:00 PM. A "complex" question is anything that requires an answer longer than "Aisle 2". This is their busiest time and if they're answering your questions they're not taking in money and that pisses them off.
- If you're buying something and you have people behind you, have your money/cards ready. Watching you fumble with your wallet pisses them off.
- If you are looking for something and they don't seem to have it, ask when they'll have it in. There's always a good chance that it's upstairs or they're expecting a shipment sometime in the future.
- Despite what they tell you, they're always getting in new stock. If you see something you like, but the only ones they have are incomplete or apparently damaged DON'T BUY IT! - they'll probably have more in stock in a few weeks or they'll pull more down from upstairs when the current stock is sold.
- Learn Polish, Ukrainian or Russian. At the very least it's entertaining to listen to what they think about their customers (I caught them saying that they wished a certain customer, who was no better than a misbegotten dog (literal Ukrainian translation), and all their descendents would be hit by a bright bolt of lighting. This is a mighty powerful curse.)
The simple rule is, don't piss them off.myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
Computer Recyclers, 163 MacFarlane Road off Marivale. (613)723-3135
Not even in the same league as Active Surplus in Toronto, but not too shabby either. Lots of neat old corperate stuff, cheap U racks, steppers, power supplies, etc.