Old Question Hoping for Fresh Answer

[jollyrgr]

In California I know there are lots of stores that sell surplus stuff most people would call "junk". There are also stores like Alltronics, Halted, and so on. You've probably seen the ads in N&V Magazine. <p>Well I'm looking some of these in the Northern Illinois area. They used to have a number of these but I don't know where they are, if they still exist. There used to be 645 Electronics. The street address was 645 but I have forgotten the street. It does not matter as I remember how to get there and they no longer exist. This guy sold kits, old manuals (a side business called "Musty Manuals" worked out of this same store), CB and Ham radios, vacuum tubes, wire, eletronic what-you-may-call-its, etc. Things were more or less sorted into tables of related stuff. Sometimes you would find "one of a kind" items, others were normal stock.<p>There were also a number of what I can only describe as warehouse clearance stores. They bought up all sorts of surplus electronics, machines, and things you had no idea what the original intention was. They would then sell them for pennies. The two stores I used to visit have been closed for close to a decade now. If anyone remembers ON TV will know about the ON TV boxes. These warehouses had skid loads of these things. (For those that do not know about ON TV let me tell you before you ask. This was a SINGLE channel cable station before cable was popluar. You turned your TV to channel 3 then turned the big knob on the front of the ON TV box. This gave you one extra channel of "first run" movies, sports, and late at night adult TV.)<p>The only one I know about now is American Scientific and Surplus. These guys rock but are not quite the same.<p>Hopefully someone knows about stores like I'm talking about either in the Chicago to Rockford area or in southern Wisconsin.<p>Maybe the electronics/tinkering hobby is just too small and none of these stores exist anymore. But All Electronics, ALLTRONICS, HALTED, and others remain in California. Is this the only place that these can survive?

[Dean Huster]

They are difficult to find if they exist, for they don't often advertize in the pages of color in the phone book (how was that for PC?).<p>There was one I hit in Dallas and some of the big electronics places there (I think Rockwell/Collins was one) had stores where they dumped their surplus. Texas Instruments had salvage auctions and a friend of mine built the best test equipment repair/calibration lab in the DFW area back in the 1980s just by haunting those auctions. There's Gateway Electronics in St. Louis and they opened another store in Denver years ago. Oklahoma City has "Smitty's". So, they do exist. If OKC has one, you can bet that the Windy City does, too.<p>One suggestion would be to attend a few ham radio fests and question the folks around there about local stores. For that matter, look up some "old timer" hams in the area who might have been hot and heavy into home brew -- they'll know.<p>Dean

[Mike]

Its pretty funny you should ask, i also live in illinois and have been looking for those kind of stores also.<p>I visit the sci $ surplus on roosevelt road all the time. <p>Other than that, I don't think there really are any. The only places I can think of are the Future electronics store past shamburg (i know its spelled wrong ) and Tri-state electronics. Either of those stores are surplus, and the TRI-state one certainly isn't cheap.<p>I have never been to the future one, but want to someday (hopefully soon).<p>-mike

[wd5gnr]

I don't know how far it is for you (but it has to be closer than Ca) but if you take a road trip to Dayton Ohio, Mendelson's http://www.meci.com/ is amazing. They have one entire floor devoted to electronic stuff and it is nothing short of amazing. You can't get a feel for the scope of it unless you've been there.<p>The pictures at http://www.mendelsons.com/gallery.html don't do it justice.<p>Every business trip I take to Dayton or Columbus I try to swing out here. I also do the "geek shops" in the CA valley (as my XYL calls them). But this is like all of them rolled into one. Honestly, I've never seen anything else on this scale.<p>[ January 21, 2004: Message edited by: wd5gnr ]</p>

[jollyrgr]

Thanks for the replies.<p>I have been to numerous ham fests in the area and do look for sellers; so far no luck. As far as Future and Tri-State: I'm on both their mailing lists. In fact Tri-State used to know me so well that they knew to ask if my purchase was for the company account or my personal purchase. But that was a number of years ago. Now it is only for me and visits are once or twice a year.<p>The places I'm talking about, though, are for the hard core do-it-yourself, ham, experimenter, or electronics freak (i.e. me). But with the decline in electronics magazines, electronics programs in schools going away, and so on, I doubt these businesses can survive. I'd just hoped another local would say "Don't you know about ....?" and I'd find a place to go.