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What is the best electronics deal you ever scored?

dougw

I am sure I have scored some great deals over the years and probably the road tests and contest winnings I've had on element14 would rank as the best deals I ever had.

I am asking this question because I am sure the answers will trigger some great memories of deals I found along the way.

I do remember one one auction I went to where I got a box of fifteen brand new 9V transformers for about $20. These things were perfect for 5 to 12 V linear power supplies. They were big - about 15 amp outputs and they were so heavy I had to sell half of them to the guys I was bidding against, just so I could carry the rest in my back-pack. But it also meant I got all I could carry almost for free.

Those flea markets and Ham fests and electronics auctions seem to have disappeared from this area.

If you have a picture of your great deal, all the better...

  • 0 in reply to dougw

    It needs TLC - a mechanical issue to fix.

    Christmas holiday plan: repair a 60s turntable
    I have a turntable from the mid-60, Thorens TD 124. It has a mechanical issue: the speed selector has a worn-out component. This holiday I'll see if I can fix this. These tables, and the components…
    By in Community Hub > Member's Forum
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  • 0 in reply to Fred27

    Yupp, I second that.. Loved Ti these mini yet powerful (that time, for me) development boards..
    image

    And these too..


    - mudzimage

  • 0

    Celestion speakers from the UK. For virtually nothing at a recycler:

     

    imageimage

     

    The lower "circle" is a passive radiator. A novel (then) flat plate that gets kicked by the backward pressure of the speaker above it....

    These weren't expensive in the day either. Affordable for many household and there were many around.

  • 0

    Once every five years I might do well on an e-bay auction. My hit rate is low on that.

    I once managed to get a load of brand new high voltage supplies (kV) for about £20 total, and I'm sure they were worth a few £k originally (they were very old unused ones in sealed boxes). I felt sorry for the seller, he'd just retired and I'm sure had hoped they would sell for more (I was the only bidder) so I just gave him more money when I went to collect them - still way less than they were worth (but at the same time I would not have purchased them at a much higher price for occasional work..) so at least he must have felt a bit better.

    I also did well last week, with a near-unused data logger for just over £100. (I wanted a power meter, but they are more expensive - the data logger did that feature but didn't advertise it well).

    I should point out I've also done exceptionally bad in the past - like a power meter that was faulty : (

  • 0

    My XYZ Printing da Vinci Pro 3D printer went for $300 bucks on amazon brand new.  Since, I can't find it for less then $540.

  • 0 in reply to DAB

    How did you fit a computer room in your wife? image

  • 0

    I'm sure, with the current COVID-19 situation, I suspect that such events might not be around for a while. In Australia, surplus and boot-sales are definitely not something that happen regularly simply because the community and demand is quite small. I tend to make the trek up to the Central Coast Amateur Radio Club's Wyong Field Day for their "hamfest-style" boot sales, but the pickings usually are fairly slim. I've blogged about my hauls in the past -

     

    I suppose the best thing I got out of the most recent one was a USB External BluRay writer for AU$25 still-in-box (although likely used briefly in ex-display condition) and getting a few Sunon MagLev 60mm DC brushless fans which I managed to use to replace a noisy fan with failed bearings in my relatively young R&S NGM202 power supply. I suppose hunting for bargains online seems to be the way to go in Australia, although there aren't that many to be found once you count the cost of shipping into it.

     

    - Gough

  • 0 in reply to Jan Cumps

    That looks immaculate. I still have some vinyl around someplace, maybe even a turntable, but it sure isn't a Thorens.

  • 0

    Sort of a stretch for electronics deal, but it is electro-mechanical (some of the units did have stepperdrivers attached).  One of my many past jobs was working for a life sciences company that built instrumentation for various forms of testing.  One of their products was an autosampler that would draw vapors from a series of vials, arranged in a rectangular array.  This product suffered some issues from it's original design, so the company did a mass recall and retrofit of the device.  The result of this recall was a large number of XYZ stages (equipped with stepper motors, gears, belts, leas screws, anti-backlash devices, low friction slides and bushings, etc.)  that were deposited in the dumpster in the back of the company.  Not being opposed to 'dumpster diving' at the time, I had acquired many of these XYZ stages.  I sold over 30 of these on Ebay (~$50 to $80 each, so around $1500-2400 in total ), gave some to friends, salvaged parts off of others until there were only a few left over as I prepared for my big move to Texas .  Here are some of the pics that I used on Ebay:

    imageimage

    imageimage

  • 0

    Best deal I ever had came at a company surplus equipment sale.

    Two of us found this box of OpAmps and split the box between us for about 10 USD.

     

    It turned out that they were not supposed to be sold and the group wanted them back.

    We negotiated a return and made about $400 each by selling them back.

     

    DAB

     

    PS, at another sale I picked up a stack of SteelCase cubical tops for 1 USD.

    I ended up selling a lot of them at $10 a square foot and made a lot of money, plus outfitted my wife with a really beautiful computer room.