Like any manufacturer, we buy components to manufacture our products. Like almost all manufacturers, we don't do a perfect job of estimating the quantity we need. When a product we manufacture is discontinued we are left with an inventory imbalance that can leave us with anywhere from a few to a few thousand extra components. After three and a half decades of building products, we have a LOT of extra components.
The theory, unsurprisingly, is mine. It goes something like this:
All the stuff (and yes, things,) we are selling on this site cost us real money. In most cases we paid just about what you would have had you bought from the manufacturer, a franchised distributor, or other authorized source.
In the past, when a part became surplus to our needs, we had the option of discarding it, selling it to a "broker" for a couple of cents on the dollar, or indefinitely squirreling it away in a warehouse.
Can you say "pack rat"?
A nice thing about electronic parts is that they usually don't take up nearly as much space as warehice have! Thus, they're mostly still here, not relegated to trash bins, and most emphatically not sold to brokers. And thus they would remain, were it not for the glorious internet! Arrayed for your pleasure, findable by any search engine, is an ever-expanding compendium of parts that we no longer need, ones that you very well may.
The good news: These are generally perfect, "new old stock" parts, with a perfectly acceptable if no longer accessible provenance.
The bad news: You can't have them for two cents on the dollar. The goal of this site is to eliminate the middleman - the broker who will offer $.02 for a dollar part, and then resell it for $3.50 because it's so hard to find.
The good news: You can have them for half of what we paid for them, more or less, if we can even remember what we paid. We think that's fair to everyone, will save you a fortune over a broker, and makes it worthwhile for us to even bother compiling this web site.
The reason you're looking at this site is because you searched for something and found it here. We won't gouge you on price, and we hope you will be willing to pay a fair price. If not, please remember that many items have been here for decades. We like electronic stuff. And we have plenty of storage room.