Great Surplus Stores? 518
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.
Re:Active Surplus in Toronto! (Score:5, Interesting)
As the Parent said, who knows if they have an online presence. Frankly, I hope (and have a feeling) they don't - if you only go to that place to buy certain items (without an open mind about what else is there) you're missing most of the fun of the place.
Re:Active Surplus in Toronto! (Score:1, Interesting)
use and abuse radioshack (Score:5, Interesting)
99, 49 and 0 cents - almost what radioshack merchandise is worth
Dumpsters (Score:2, Interesting)
Its free.
Re:Active Surplus in Toronto! (Score:4, Interesting)
MadCow.
MSU Salvage (Score:3, Interesting)
I've seen everything from (lots of ) lab equipment, to a PDP-11, to the old clock from the campus belltower, to whole pallets of workstations for sale there over the years.
I still try to swing by there a couple of times a year, to see if there is anything really really cool lying around.
While it may be a long trip for many people, check with large schools near you to see if they have public sales of stuff that was lying around.
Might not be "geeky" enough... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Great Surplus stores (Score:2, Interesting)
WeirdStuff (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Science junk and more... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Great Surplus stores (Score:2, Interesting)
Unclaimed Baggage (Score:4, Interesting)
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
In NYC? Buy mine now. Cheap. (Score:3, Interesting)
Of the once mighty twenty or so, only Industrial Plastics, which isn't really surplus, is left. Down on Chambers ( few blocks south) there used to be Alexander's Hardware, largest, cheapest, and sometimes best of them all for mech gear.
Tell ya, though, I'm selling off everything I ever bought at those places this very month, from steppers to 1/4 horsepower to gears, to screws and bolts, to tiny Japanese demon faces. Anybody want to buy the stock of an entire prototyping lab cheap better contact me now. The drill press is already spoken for, as are the three milk crates of SCSI and monitor cables, the bags of glass tubes, the fine rod stock,
The times, they are a changin.
Rustin
History of Active Surplus and Toronto computers... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:"Tinfoil hats" (Score:2, Interesting)
If you buy chemicals, exotic electronics, avionics, biotech equipment, centrifuges, radio controlled airplanes, HAZMAT suits, welding tanks, or even a pallet load of aluminum tubes, you are raising flags by doing something "out of the ordinary".
I would be EXTREMELY surprised if the CIA, NSA, and FBI all were NOT automatically trolling the listings and keeping list of who was bidding on unusual items. ("Carnivore" sound familiar?) Its just too easy to do these days and you don't need Ebay's help or permission to do that. Its freely available information to collect and data-mine. A central data base containing a good percentage of the uncommon/unusual purchases people have made within the US and abroad. Its very easy to build profiles of people by what they buy and sell.
These agencies would be TOTALLY STUPID not to do so in the name of "homeland security". I would not be surprised if they even plant particular items to see who's interested, afterall its perfectly legal to re-sell "government surplus"!
I think people do have a reason to worry about that. Its uncomfortable to do business if "big brother" is looking over your shoulder. So yes, you DO need to wear a "tin foil hat" figuratively speaking and be careful about how you conduct yourself and what you buy, or else you might find it necessary to explain yourself to some large men in black suits one day. It stifles creativity, ingenuity, and freedom.
Wierd Stuff warning label (Score:3, Interesting)
more than electronics (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re:Mendelson's Electronic Surplus, Dayton OH (Score:4, Interesting)
The place is amazing... the electrical / electronics floor is probably about 2 acres (seriously). Electrolytic capacitors the size of a trash can... all sorts of very cool stuff (and lots of total junk also).
Ottawa, ON (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
GSAAuctions.gov (Score:2, Interesting)
-no signature is good enough