Don't forget to lurk at surplus stores and websites. I wooda never bought a hundred of the thousand puff caps if they weren't practically free (one or two bucks per hundred).

Yeah surplus is great, but SOMETIMES what you get isn't exactly what you were hoping for. TH Goldmine is good. I don't really have any true electronics surplus places around by where I live...I do live 10 minutes form New York City, yet somehow, I cannot locate a decent electronics supplier...so I'm sticking to Mouser/Digikey.

Too bad Mouser charged me $30 to ship a 2lb box to me the other day. >.>

 

I do resent the price of shipping. Usta be that if a vendor had an "exclusive" contract with UPS, a single transistor would cost $10 to ship. Might still be true. When I saw that, I sent the transistor back via postal service in a padded brown envelope with a note that said, "I just shipped this for 89 cents".

One forgettable seller sent me a single IC in a box that was 4" x 6" x 12"
It was so incredible that I took pictures and sent them to my friends.
Sorry, don't have the pix now.

Are we far enough off topic?

 

I do resent the price of shipping. Usta be that if a vendor had an "exclusive" contract with UPS, a single transistor would cost $10 to ship. Might still be true. When I saw that, I sent the transistor back via postal service in a padded brown envelope with a note that said, "I just shipped this for 89 cents".

One forgettable seller sent me a single IC in a box that was 4" x 6" x 12"
It was so incredible that I took pictures and sent them to my friends.
Sorry, don't have the pix now.

Are we far enough off topic?

Much far enough. I thought I might add that I just bought 4x LM386 from Digikey. They only charged me like $3 to ship it, but it came in a box roughly 8 x 6 x 2...hmm....