Electronics Surplus Stores, a Vanishing Breed

r

Yes, there are fewer manufacturers, and also fewer customers for sub-assemb lies and components. I have seen many potential customers in public, bendin g over a Facebucket, confessing their proud moments, wild bar scenes, and m edical conditions. Millions of people are being absorbed by the entertainin g images of video screens. Surplus electronics are not compatible with Sams ung and Apple smart phones. Billions of lazy rich people have chosen their area of focus. They do not want to build big clunky electronic creations. T hey are busy bending over a Facebucket. They know they are outclassed by 20

On Fri, 13 May 2016 16:16:24 -0700, sms Gave us:

Two electronic and military surplus stores in El Cajon.

Three actually, I think. At least one sells online.

We have a small "electronics" store here that also peddles surplus kit. OTOH, there are lots of auctions (open to public) that you can tap for all sorts of oddities -- SEM's, avionics, medical instrumentation, etc. (in addition to the inevitable PC stuff).

Anyone know if Eli's (Heffron's) is still in business?

I think the move to using canned subassemblies (instead of "from scratch" designs) has been a bigger nail in the coffin. How often do you see folks approaching problems with the "we can use a PC and add..." attitude? Or, a raspberry pi? Or an arduino? Or...

When I was an MIT student I would go to Eli Heffron's just about every Saturday ;-) ...Jim Thompson

Silicon Valley Surplus Sources (to July 2015): Are all the others now gone?

We have one surplus chain left in the Chicago area- American Science and Surplus. It basically converted to a toy store about 15 years ago. There's a few electromechanical items, but not like the good old days when there were factories next to the store itself.

Can't really blame them though.

Minneapolis seems to have a better rounded chain called Axe Man surplus. No surprise, they had lots of stuff from local medical equipment manufacturers, which is a hot thing in that area.

I've been to Halted's new store, Anchor, and Excess Solutions recently. Haven't been over to ACE in the last year or so but their web site is still alive and I don't see any indication that they've closed their retail location.

Alltronics does offer a will-call pickup although I don't think they have an open store/warehouse any more.

So, I think the Junktronix listing is basically correct.

r

Radio Equipment Corp. here in Buf. NY, I haven't been there for ages... I found a facebook post that says they closed in May of 2015.

George H.

Around here we have Electronic Surplus Inc which is a shadow of its former self. They have the square footage but I went walking onto an area in the b ack and they threw me out of it saying it's a stock area. The actual area c ustomers walk around in is not even one tenth the area it used to be. This leads me to believe they are using the building dual purpose, perhaps some sort of online business that is not surplus.

One place I overlooked for decades is HGR. Buddy of mine introduced me to t hat place a couple years ago. There, electronic surplus is only part of the ir game. They have machinery and all kinds of s*it, I would say electronics is about a tenth of it. They do get in scopes and other equipment, and you can actually plug stuff in.

I've been to Skycraft. Nice place. They seem to have a little bit different stuff. That was in 1995 though so who knows how it is now. While they had plenty of electronics, they had a bunch of other stuff as well. Optics, I b ought a couple of prisms just for the hell of it. They went missing over th e last 20 years of course, but I still have some of the the 0.012" alcohol freon core solder.

Did you take stuff from there to class for show and tell ? LOL

Hell, you might be old enough to remember when kids would bring their new rifle to show and tell...

Different days.

I have seen their catalog, yup - a toy store. Unfortunately the same thing happened to Edmund Scientific.

The glory days of Canal Street in lower Manhattan are long gone. Instead of old radar parts, it's now just Chinese knockoffs.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

There was also Weird Stuff Warehouse and Mike Quinn's at the Oakland Airport. Mike Quinn's was still near there, about 2 blocks from the airport, last time I was out there.

Jon

OH, MAN! That dates you as a REAL old-timer, like me! I had family in Brooklyn, so would get up there quite frequently. When I got old enough, I'd take the subway down to Canal Street and spend a morning just walking around. They had AMAZING stuff to look at, and there were 4-5 stores per BLOCK, come out of one and go right into the next one. Radio, computer, radar, aircraft instruments, and on and on. This was probably about 1959 -

Jon

The Electronics Flea Market moved to De Anza College from Foothill College, and I usually go. It's about a mile from my house so I bike over there. It's a shadow of its former self. Sometimes I find something I want, but there's fewer and fewer vendors, especially after they raised the price for spaces. It's tomorrow, so I may go over there. My wife likes the local honey that some guy sells there!

All Electronics is located in a seedy part of L.A., but it's not too bad. Halted's old building is being razed for housing or Class A office space. Every old tilt-up building around my wife's office has been razed and new commercial and residential buildings were quickly built, and they have to be out of their old 1970's tilt-up in a few weeks.

We used to go to Apache Reclamation. A lot of Honeywell, Moto, GE and other stuff showed up there. I got my hands on a honeywell book that had the IC internal part numbers and pin-outs and mfg cross reference.

Dont even know if they are still in business. If they are it is probably just junk PC stuff.

I remember going to Canal Street with my dad. I was probably about 11. I could have spent all day there.

The sad thing about the surplus stores was when you saw something you designed being sold for a tiny fraction of what it cost to manufacture.

Nah, just a groupie of the old days, courtesy of old magazines. ;)

I was born in 1959, and didn't get interested in radio until I was 10. Radio Row got knocked down in 1966 because the Port Authority wanted to build the World Trade Center. I only heard about it from Tom Kneitel and folks like that, in Electronics Illustrated.

I didn't move to NY until 1987.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs