Best place for a hobbiest to buy small amounts of parts?

What is the best place for a hobbiest to buy small amounts of electronic parts?

I am looking for an online source where I can place orders for a handful of parts at a time, which does not require $50 or more orders, or charge huge shipping fees. I am also looking mostly for parts for antique tube equipment. My typical order would likely be $20 or less of caps, resistors, and maybe some solder or a tool, and so on....

From what I've seen, Mouser, Digi-Key and Allied seem to be the biggies... But I have to admit that they have so much in their websites that I almost feel overwhelmed. And I hear they have large minimums and shipping, but I never got that far on their websites.... (I have to go to a public WIFI to use those sites, since I only have dialup at home).

I know ebay is an option too, but ordering each item separately can be a pain too.

I have been out of this hobby for around 40 years and am getting back in, but only working on old tube stuff. I remember this stuff like it was yesterday, but back then, I lived in a city, and there were many "brick" electronics stores nearby. Now, I live in a rural area, and aside from the very limited parts at a Radio Shack, (25 miles away) there are no longer any "brick" stores. Not to mention that much of not most places seem to cater to solid state devices now. [Times have changed a lot].

What (if any) online stores will fit my needs? Maybe its none of these huge stores, but something smaller...

Thanks

Reply to
oldschool
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Mouser Newark DigiKey Fair Radio Surplus Shed (for some things) Mark Oppat

At at least half-a-dozen others.

You also need to get to Kutztown in the spring, where all sorts of vendors of all sorts of things are all gathered in one place at one time.

Peter Wieck Melrose Park, PA

Reply to
pfjw

I have placed small (around $ 25) orders from Mouser and Digikey with no problem. I believe it is Digikey that only charges about $ 4 shipping for very small orders such as up to 8 oz shipped by the USPS.

If you do go to ebay for the parts, watch out for the China places. Some are good and some send junk parts.

Reply to
Ralph Mowery

I'll add Allied Electronics to the list

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Also for odd parts and such try Electronic Gold Mine

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Avnet was a good place to order from but they have really messed up their web site now, but they did have $9 fedex ground shipping.

I think Mouser still has $8 USPS shipping for small orders.

SparkFun has been mentioned in another post. Lots of great experminter boards and break out boards.

I would start with Digi-Key. IMHO they have the best search engine. Once I find the part(s) I plug them into other web sites to check availability, price and shipping cost. It also depends on where you live. I'm 4 hours driving distance from Mouser so normal UPS ground is "next day" for me.

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Chisolm 
Republic of Texas
Reply to
Joe Chisolm

I just found a reliable source for parts in China. They carry ics which aren't available outside of China. They are utsource.net. It takes about 2 weeks to receive the parts. I was charged $4.00 shipping. (to USA) I had four portable PAs (Megamouths) which needed ics that I could only previously find in 1000 lots. Was going to toss them but checked again. This company will sell you any quantity and was able to repair them for a grand total of $18.00 in parts and shipping.

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Reply to
Chuck

I agree with you regarding EBay sellers, but...

You're wrong to discount Aliexpress. You get access to thousands of vendors (same as EBay) but none of them see your credit card, and until you approve of the product *as delivered*, they don't get your money either. If you receive nothing, or they ship the wrong thing, or even if it's demonstrably faulty, Ali mediates a resolution. The most common resolution is that you bin the item and get your money back.

For China Post shipping of small items (3 cigarette packet size) you get free shipping... my orders are often under $20... no Western supplier will do this for you.

This does not happen with Aliexpress.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

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I don't think that's an all inclusive statement. I've ordered batches of m osfets for plasma sustain boards and some lots of 50 would show different p rinting, different cases, different lead stampings, (which tend to support the theory that some might be original and some might be counterfeit) and s ome were clearly pulls.

Reply to
ohger1s

Ouch. I haven't had a problem with a $100 order, only small ones.

For example, one vendor shipped a dangerous illegal "power saving" device (small capacitor and an LED) with a European socket, when I had ordered a 12V 3A power brick. Duh. It wasn't hard to convince Ali that it belonged in the bin, and I got my money back. A battery pack for a hand-held transceiver never arrived, though tracking said it was in a warehouse somewhere... after six weeks I got my money back. Another order for five magnets shipped one, so I got an 80% refund. Three problems in perhaps 60 orders...

So yeah, you can have problems... but none so far has cost me anything.

Yep, Amazon is good. They just don't have many of the things I want.

Clifford Heath.

Reply to
Clifford Heath

I buy a lot of stuff from Digi-Key. They do have a minimum order, but it is not that bad. These days, if you buy a few chips as well as passives, you are pretty likely to go above their minimum (I think it is still $25). Their single-piece prices are not really steep.

Mouser is also pretty good.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

I dont buy anything from China. (or any place outside of North America). It takes too long to get the items, if the stuff is defective, I'm stuck with it, and I do not trust giving out my credit card info. I only buy from the US and Canada. When I am on ebay, the first thing I do is set their filter to US Only. Otherwise my page is flooded with China items. Sure, I could often save a dollar or two buying from China, but it's not worth the hassle.

The one and only time I bought an ebay item from outside the US, I bought something from the UK. The order got all screwed up, and it turned into a huge hassle. I lost money, got an item I did not really want, and the seller lost too. I made a point to never buy from outside North America again.

Reply to
oldschool

The only times I've had trouble with eBay orders is when I didn't follow up on keeping track of them. I find ebay sellers to be very responsive because they live and die by their rating. If all else fails (which it has sometimes) I dispute the charge on my credit card and have never failed to get the refund.

It's just not that big a deal normally. Having to wait over a month before filing for an "item not received" refund is a bit of a pain, but I only use this for things I don't need any time soon.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

I could not disagree more with your assertions about AliExpress. If you receive goods which were either defective or not as represented you can get your money back but only if you ship the items back to the sender at your expense. On a recent $105 order with AliExpress, the shipping cost to return the item was $48. It took weeks of email exchanges with the sender before they were even willing to take back the item. My experience with Amazon is the exact opposite.

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Reply to
root

DigiKey and (I think) Mouser got rid of their minimum order prices years ago.

But they kind of make up for it by charging more per piece as you order fewer pieces -- as an example, 0604 resistors are $0.10 in onsies, and about $0.12 for ten.

You might want to check Antique Radio Supply for the tube-specific stuff

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They'll have the tubes and sockets and transformers that DigiKey just doesn't carry. They may even have better deals on small quantities of the sorts of resistors and caps that show up in toob amplifiers than does DigiKey.

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Tim Wescott 
Wescott Design Services 
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Reply to
Tim Wescott

Well, you might have to "man up" and enter the modern times of online marketing :-). As stated ebay with paypal or similar gives pretty good protection against problem trades. Also as you are only buying small quantities you will not be risking much. For buying small quantities from several traders ebay makes it easy for you by putting all the purchases in your "basket" with one payment. It's not as hard as you may think and you really didn't give it much of a go with one buy. Most of the asian traders are honest and paypal keeps them that way.

Reply to
Rheilly Phoull

A really funky web site is

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I've ordered parts from "Dan" and never had "issues". Lots of old descrete parts. It can take a bit to dig through all he has listed. (He definitely does NOT pay anyone to maintain that web site. :-)

Jonesy

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  Marvin L Jones     | W3DHJ      | W3DHJ  | https://W3DHJ.net/ 
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Reply to
Allodoxaphobia

Paypal and eBay protection are virtually non-existent unless you lie or the seller really screws up. If they are honest you will get a refund or replacement. But if they are honest, you don't need protection. I've had eBay/Palpal refuse to give me a refund when the item was never delivered and returned to the seller instead. I had to file a dispute with the credit card company. I don't think eBay even had a person look at my case. UPS said it was "delivered" and the eBay system doesn't bother to look at *where* it was delivered.

I remember back when Paypal tried to enforce a provision in the agreement with the customers of no charge-backs. Fortunately the credit card companies didn't go for that.

NEVER buy anything through any of these services unless you pay for it by credit card and make sure you file a claim within two months of the statement the charge appears on. Don't let them talk you into anything but a full refund of the item charge *and* shipping or delay you past your dispute period.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Amazon seems to police their vendors, almost to a fault. It would be interesting to know from the vendor side how it feels to deal with a bad buyer (eg. broke the product, tells lies, etc.)

Ali- rather less so and as you say the shipping cost back works in favor of a bad seller- you *have* to use a method with tracking so not cheap. Sometimes you can get partial (maybe half) the money back without sending it back. 8-(

--sp

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Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany
Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Does Amazon have a way to ask vendors questions about the product? I know I have looked many, many times and not found a link. I know where the eBay link is. With Aliexpress communications is often not very useful as I don't get answers that show an understanding of my question. I've just never gotten a warm fuzzy feeling from Amazon.

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Rick C
Reply to
rickman

Years ago, I got some really bad items from ebay, and it was a real hassle cleaning it up, usually costing me a big chunk of the money I paid, to ship the item back.

Things are now much better with ebay. Last year I bought a used laptop computer with XP installed. The physical hardware in the computer worked fine, but the operating system was majorly borked. It took 5 min to even load, and constantly crashed. The WIFI did not work at all. I complained to the seller. He told me to try a few tests, which I did, but it would not work regardless. He issued a refund and told me to dispose of the computer. I wiped the hard drive and installed XP myself, using an xp CD I alreeady had. I have been using that computer ever since and it works fine.

Then I bought an expensive (NEW) starter for my farm tractor. I installed it, and found it was completely dead. The seller sent me another starter, which arrived in 3 days, and works fine. He told me to just throw the defective one away.

I have been pretty satisfied with my purchases from ebay in recent years.

Reply to
oldschool

I had something not delivered, and the tracking info was inconclusive/contradictory. I waited an extra week, asked Ebay for my money back, and got it. I can't remember whether it was the seller or ebay that refunded it.

A week later the seller contacted me to say the item had been returned to them, and did I still want it? No, I didn't.

I wondered about the tracking info, and whether the seller had even had it in stock in the first place.

Reply to
Tom Gardner

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