[HN Gopher] Long live American Science and Surplus
___________________________________________________________________
Long live American Science and Surplus
Author : thinkalone
Score : 380 points
Date : 2025-05-28 20:47 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (milwaukeerecord.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (milwaukeerecord.com)
| RajT88 wrote:
| I used to know the lady who managed the one in IL.
|
| Truly an awesome store. Filled with very eccentric shoppers.
| pfdietz wrote:
| There were at least two in Illinois.
| RajT88 wrote:
| The one in St. Charles then.
| beatboxrevival wrote:
| Loved the store, and the mailer as a kid. Really inspired me to
| build things. Really wish more stores like it still existed.
| Anytime I'm back in MKE, it's one of my first stops.
| cardamomo wrote:
| Same here! I make a yearly pilgrimage whenever I'm in town
| visiting my parents.
| bittercynic wrote:
| Anyone know a way to find stores in other areas with this kind of
| spirit? Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale used to feel a bit like this to
| me.
| seany wrote:
| Halted was similar, but they're also gone :/
| bittercynic wrote:
| Oh, damn, I didn't realize they were gone. I used to like
| shopping there, but they started to seem less fun as time
| went on, and the last couple of times I went it seemed to
| have lost those positive/creative vibes.
| mindcrime wrote:
| It's not exactly the same, but for folks in the Triangle
| (Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill) area of NC, there is The Scrap
| Exchange[1].
|
| [1]: https://www.scrapexchange.org/
| begemotz wrote:
| Ax-Man Surplus in MN. https://www.ax-man.com/
| simonw wrote:
| I visited that place a couple of months ago, it was
| _fantastic_.
| jer0me wrote:
| Axman Surplus in MSP
| wileydragonfly wrote:
| Electronic Parts Outlet in Houston, TX
| Ccecil wrote:
| The Reuseum in Garden City, ID
|
| https://www.reuseum.com/
| zrobotics wrote:
| Bookmarking this, I can't believe I didn't know about this
| place when I lived there (although that was long enough ago
| they might not have been open).
| blaines wrote:
| Jameco in Belmont, CA jameco.com
|
| This is my Bay Area resource for electronic parts in a pinch.
| mediumdave wrote:
| Skycraft Surplus in Orlando: https://skycraftsurplus.com/
|
| I was there last week (in town on business), and I found a
| Vector 3677-2 protoboard for $2!
| qingcharles wrote:
| This was always my go to, and a large source for movie-making:
|
| https://apexsurplus.com/
| mmmlinux wrote:
| I hate how few responses there are to this.
| daemonologist wrote:
| Easily the best store I've ever been to. Unfortunately the
| nearest one is ~an hour drive, so I only visit once every couple
| of years, but it's always a good afternoon.
| onetimeusename wrote:
| I went to one to help me with an idea for a 7th grade science
| fair when I was a child and the staff helped me figure out which
| items I needed, which included a bunch of electronics parts and
| motors I had no idea what I was doing with. They patiently and
| very enthusiastically explained to me how they worked, how to
| safely use them, and gave me encouragement on my ideas for the
| project. They thought it was a cool idea. I was really blown
| away. I went on to win that science fair but honestly could not
| have done it without their help.
|
| I still go back once in a while and love to look at the strange
| electronics parts they somehow acquired. I definitely love that
| someone decided to try to collect and sell these things.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| They helped me out for my 8th grade science fair! I wanted to
| build a shake table to simulate the effects of earthquakes on
| buildings. (tl;dr: the taller the building, the more flexible
| it is. At least according to my experiment, which did get me a
| place at the state finals.) They helped me size the motor and
| even had an AC one I could plug directly into the wall. This
| was the Geneva location.
| ghaff wrote:
| Post probably here because I mentioned it in a comment. Should
| make a big post-fire purchase.
| MaDeuce wrote:
| These were my go-to guys for sciencey stocking stuffers at
| Christmas for my kids. Their catalog was always a joy to read,
| with excellent puns.
|
| Like the guy who wrote the linked article, a GoFundMe for a for-
| profit enterprise rubs me the wrong way. However, I just donated
| because of all the great memories they've provided me and my
| kids. Seems like those of us that like these things may need to
| pitch in from time to time.
|
| I wonder if something like this could have helped Lindsay's
| Publications, who went out of business a decade ago. I have so
| many fantastic books from them. They're really worth a HN post
| all on their own.
|
| https://makezine.com/article/workshop/lindsays-technical-boo...
| bluGill wrote:
| Lindsay retired. Not quite the same. I still miss them though,
| many interesting books and well currated
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Scored a lot of Lindsay's books when you still could (lot of
| build-your-own regenerative receivers and similar, reprints of
| "The Boy Mechanic", "5 Acres and Independence", etc.).
|
| I would suspect (hope) many have been "archived" at "the org".
|
| (EDIT: I see for example "The Impoverished Radio Experimenter
| Vol. 4": https://archive.org/details/impoverishedradi0000lind/m
| ode/2u...)
| kragen wrote:
| This is a great recommendation, thanks! I've found a lot of
| interesting _old_ radio hobbyist magazines on the Archive,
| whose copyright has expired. While it 's great to see how
| people could get stuff done with the very limited electrical
| resources available in the 01910s and 01920s, many of the
| designs depend on materials that are now hard to find, while
| materials that are now easy to find (like PN2222s) didn't
| exist.
| jonah-archive wrote:
| We have a big and ongoing focus on amateur radio right now
| thanks to a grant from ARDC and really hard work by our
| awesome Program Manager Kay Savetz. Worth checking out:
| https://blog.archive.org/2022/11/16/digital-library-of-
| amate... https://archive.org/details/dlarc
| kragen wrote:
| Thanks! I had no idea! Your work is one of the three or
| four most important projects sustaining civilization
| right now; it will be profoundly missed when it's gone.
| jeff_carr wrote:
| > a GoFundMe for a for-profit enterprise rubs me the wrong way
|
| It should. They should be selling shares. The Green Bay Packers
| are similar.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Yeah, why aren't they?
| immibis wrote:
| Maybe they don't want to be forced to run their store for
| maximum profit in the future.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| just issue non-voting shares like all the cool tech
| companies
| semiquaver wrote:
| Completely flabbergasted to see one of my favorite stores of all
| time at the top of HN. This place is an absolute gem and I have
| countless childhood memories of visiting the Milwaukee Av
| location.
|
| Heartbroken to see they're in financial distress. If there's any
| store worth saving it's this one.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I ordered motors and pumps from that catalog as a kid. Can you
| imagine I used to love going through the stuff they had on a
| paper catalog!
| throwaway20222 wrote:
| In person you could also see their supplies of sodium and
| potassium in sealed glass containers. I always wanted to get
| my hands on those.
|
| Like you said, so many motors and switches; likely a big part
| of the reason I do what I do for a living today.
| zrobotics wrote:
| I actually specifically made a trip to Milwaukee 1/3 for the
| Harley museum and 2/3 for ASS (that acronym was definitely
| deliberate). I've enjoyed my visits to ax-man surplus [0] in
| Minneapolis enough that when I heard about a similar store it
| was enough to justify a 500mi weekend bike trip. The stores are
| very similar, but anyone lucky to live near their store knows
| that the inventory changes enough that each visit is a unique
| experience and you won't see the same things twice.
|
| saveitforparts on YouTube did an excellent tour/example video
| of ax-man [1] which gives a good idea of the type of store ASS
| is and the vibe. Even if you aren't local to the upper Midwest,
| I'd highly recommend donating to keep this store alive. It very
| much fits with the old-school hacker ethos, and keeping spaces
| like this alive helps preserve that culture and exposes younger
| people to the idea of DIY/punk/hacker and the ability to
| repurpose old/interesting stuff.
|
| Side note, I'm surprised that these types of scientific surplus
| stores have lasted longer in the upper Midwest than places like
| silicon valley or near bell labs in NJ. They aren't open for
| retail anymore and didn't have the same sense of humor, but
| Surplus Sales of Nebraska [2] is also an excellent example from
| this area of the country. I hadn't ordered since last year,
| they had held on to a delightful web 1.0 site up until sometime
| in the last year and are a legit supplier for really oddball
| stuff.
|
| [0] https://www.ax-man.com/pages/the-nature-of-surplus
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-uJPIhAUu4
|
| [2] https://www.surplussales.com/
| karlshea wrote:
| When I moved from Milwaukee to Minneapolis I was happy to
| find Ax-Man existed, but to be fair I've only made it in a
| couple of times. I hope there are still 15 year olds that are
| amazed when they walk in like I was.
|
| A core memory from back then is the big diver's helmet way in
| the back at ASS, and wishing I could buy the weird radar
| screen/oscilloscope boxes that looked like they came right
| out of a tank. And how every label for every box of parts or
| object in the whole store had funny hand lettered
| descriptions that someone spent a lot of time on.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I haven't been to Ax-Man in years, despite the fact that I
| drive up Snelling, past University at least once a month. I
| have to make the time to stop there one day.
| always-open wrote:
| Were there ever surplus stores like this near Bell Labs in
| NJ?
| toast0 wrote:
| > Side note, I'm surprised that these types of scientific
| surplus stores have lasted longer in the upper Midwest than
| places like silicon valley or near bell labs in NJ.
|
| Real estate prices are a big factor. Rents in silicon valley,
| and I suspect NJ have increased much more than midwest rents.
| Even if the store location is owned, when the business owners
| are looking to retire, it's then a question of selling the
| business with the space or closing the business and selling
| the space by itself, and the value of the space is probably
| enough that it doesn't make sense to tie it to a business.
|
| Add a bit of reality that manufacturing and the surplus it
| generates has mostly left silicon valley and NJ, and it makes
| more sense to have such a business elsewhere.
| cmcconomy wrote:
| There used to be a place much like this in Toronto called Active
| Surplus. Sadly got kicked out as rents rose on Queen Street.
|
| RIP
| https://www.google.com/maps/@43.6495767,-79.3925583,3a,77.4y...
| luyu_wu wrote:
| From what I know it still exists further out of the city. I
| have a friend who picked up quite large amount of scientific
| equipment. Might be a similar store with a different name
| though.
| blooalien wrote:
| We used to have the most amazing little electronics store a lot
| like this called "Ra-Elco" in SLC, Utah, but specifically devoted
| to every wild bit of electronics you could imagine, ranging from
| individual little components of every sort all the way up to
| weird esoteric devices nobody's ever heard of (at least there
| were a lot _I 'd_ never seen before). Totally _love_ these kinda
| shoppes, and I truly wish they weren 't such a dying breed. :(
| tdeck wrote:
| I like these places too but I can see why they are dying. The
| number of SKUs people want has exploded and the cost
| competition from buying online is unreal. Recently I needed a
| motor driver in a hurry (a4988 or equivalent) and decided to
| visit my local electronics shop. They wanted $9 for it (plus
| tax), which I was willing to pay, but were out of stock. So I
| went home and found a 5 pack of the exact same part for about
| $10, shipped from the US.
|
| The reality is that with these electronics things it's not just
| 20 or 30% cheaper to buy online, it's often 1/10 the price or
| better. I can order a 10 pack of pin headers for $1-2 from
| China and each of those headers costs 50c at my local shop.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| This is a benefit of having ultra dense industry specific
| zones like the Shenzhen SEZ. Physical vendors get the volume
| to warrant operating and reasonable pricing, buyers get
| components on short notice.
|
| Suburbanization set up the US for failure here, and the
| governments haven't bothered intentionally creating any
| equivalent of Shenzhen. Santa Clara county used to be the
| spot, and I'd regularly pick up quickturn PCBs in person.
| Still can, but if you're in SF you're probably going to wait
| for next day shipping unless it's super super important, in
| which case it could come from any domestic CM.
| owlninja wrote:
| This doesn't really solve you problem, but they did just
| open (or about to) a Micro Center in Santa Clara.
| genericone wrote:
| May 30th, just a few more days!
| 1024core wrote:
| Wasn't there already a Micro Center in the AMC Mercado
| Plaza, by that church on Great America?
| jrmg wrote:
| Not for a _long_ time now - closed in the mid 2000s I
| think.
| duped wrote:
| The public's (lack of) tolerance of pollution also impacted
| things. It's not like PCB manufacturing is clean.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| PCB manufacturing isn't that bad, semiconductor fab is
| very nasty. It was nasty an unmitigated way during the
| birth of silicon valley, check out a superfund site map
| if you're bored.
|
| https://www.arcgis.com/home/webmap/viewer.html?layers=c12
| 29e...
| xrisk wrote:
| Is it just about having dense industrial zones? I would
| have imagined cost of labor to be the major cause of price
| differences.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| A lot of the cost of silicon valley labor comes down to
| extremely high housing prices. A lot has been made of how
| the tech boom was simply a wealth transfer from investors
| to bay area real estate + homeowners.
| xrisk wrote:
| Sure but even if you exclude Silicon Valley, the minimum
| wage for a US worker must be a fair bit higher than the
| equivalent non-US worker.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| The US used to have its own SZ in lower Manhattan. They
| were abandoned when Japan did things cheaper.
| jordanb wrote:
| I tried to go to AS&S a few times working on projects. They
| never had what I needed in-stock. It honestly feels more like
| a toy/knicknack store rather than a place where you can get
| things you need to build or repair things.
| eco wrote:
| My understanding is that Ra-Elco essentially moved to Standard
| Supply after the building burned down. I haven't checked it out
| myself yet so I can't confirm.
| blooalien wrote:
| I dunno, but I _do_ know that Standard Supply has _a lot_ of
| the items I generally need and / or seek out when I'm
| visiting such places, so that's all good for me. I still miss
| Ra-Elco, but as long as I can buy the right parts locally
| when I'm in a real hurry to grab some important little widget
| or gizmo, that's what matters most to me. Especially
| important since Radio Shack is no longer _at all_ that kinda
| store (and hasn 't been for many years now).
| jlewallen wrote:
| We used to have Electronics Warehouse here in SoCal (Riverside)
| I miss them but admit I would rarely go. Selection was
| definitely better than Radio Shack, but catered to an
| electronics era my personal designs had grown away from.
| kiernanmcgowan wrote:
| Back in college we'd buy various lab glassware from AS&S for, uh,
| collegiate uses of glass. Need to hold things in place and heat
| them with precision on a budget? This is your store.
| RickS wrote:
| Oof, i'll be donating big to help out. My partner's from here and
| i visited for the first time last year. Its fantastic. Half
| kitschy weird science stuff, but half genuinely fantastic maker
| materials at great prices. Salvaged air pumps, motors from GMC
| electric seats, super high load bearings, all kinds of stuff that
| is at the intersection of obscure, extremely useful, and
| difficult to get on Amazon, especially at a reasonable price or
| small quantity.
|
| Anyone from the area should check it out.
| MinimalAction wrote:
| The title meant as if a wish for science in America to live
| longer, and that is also subject to so much target of late. Long
| live American Science institutes and their surplus of curiosity.
| the_arun wrote:
| Is this their online store - https://sciplus.com/ ? May be some
| shopping help them?
| jrmg wrote:
| Yes, that's it.
| superfunny wrote:
| I just donated - the world is a better (and weirder) place with
| this store in it. If you live in the Chicagoland or Milwaukee
| area, you should check it out.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Oh man, some of my happiest childhood memories are wandering
| around Geneva sciplus. WIll donate to save it!
| iancmceachern wrote:
| I just bought some stuff from them last month, have been a
| customer for decades. Will be donating.
| ryangittins wrote:
| This is the coolest place! I'm so sad to see they're in financial
| distress.
|
| As a kid I would browse their website endlessly, just fascinated
| by all the weird stuff. It scratched the same itch that watching
| Mythbusters would scratch. In adulthood I rediscovered them and
| went to their Milwaukee location for the first time. We spent
| hours there, looking through all the cool stuff they have. It
| really gives you ideas!
| aurizon wrote:
| Almost all the surplus stores are gone. Those that owned their
| place in a depressed warehouse district lasted the longest. Then
| they based their existence on the USA tax code. If they
| made1,200,000 electric things = 100,000 a month = sell to meet
| orders. Orders drop and they had 20,000 left and parts for the
| next 100,000. At year's end they can write them off - but can not
| keep them as written down parts = mandatory third party selloff.
| Surplus dealers would buy them at 5-15% of cost and sell in want-
| ads in several weekly mailed papers. Electronic Buyers news (EBN)
| is one I recall. 10 tabloid pages of all stuff. In the late 80's
| the internet arrived and by 2005 all these tabloids were gone.
| Then when manufacturing went to Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan and
| China the sources all collapsed. In addition, surface mount and
| LSI as well as programmed chips, meant used boards became useless
| for most - few had the hot air chip pullers. I was a member of
| Hacklab in Toronto = hacklab.to = a hacker shop you pay by the
| month and they have all types of machine tools, solder/desolder,
| laser cutters, filament printers,programmers work stations etc,
| but most use good laptops, Apple, x86 and linux and assorted
| single board small like raspberrypi etc. Even they buy from Ali
| express or one of the parts shops online, like digikey.com Times
| have hanged. I used to buy from ASS. I went to the ASD show in
| Las Vegas every year. Still going, less electronic surplus, more
| sell off goods. https://asdonline.com/about/product-categories/
| robbles wrote:
| It's a pity they don't ship to other countries than the US. I
| looked through their website and saw some fun stuff, but no
| international shipping.
| zrobotics wrote:
| Send them an email asking for a quote. For a small business
| like this, I'd expect they can probably ship it to you but the
| complexities of quoting shipping internationally means they
| don't have it on the site. Yes, shipping APIs are readily
| available, but implementing them costs more than the shoestring
| budget they likely have for the site and would also require
| integration with their inventory software. I'd be willing to
| gamble that they are likely using a homegrown WMS that is a
| combination of excel sheets and several layers of scripts from
| former and current employees who can write code but aren't
| professional developers.
|
| I've consulted for similar size businesses, and shipping
| integration was always the reason to not support international
| shipments. Send them an email, you'll almost certainly hear
| back from a real person and if you let them know what you want
| to order they can probably make it happen.
| robbles wrote:
| Good to know, thanks for the explanation!
| jsmo wrote:
| Whoa! MKE on the front page is epic!
| genewitch wrote:
| I found out about sci-plus from the other Milwaukee staple, red
| letter media. Not sure which episode, but I could find it with
| grep if needed.
| genewitch wrote:
| note: Best of the Worst: Ben and Arthur [Xto-7_xWb9g]
| Animats wrote:
| So many surplus stores are gone. Silicon Valley had HSC, where
| Steve Jobs bought Apple's first oscilloscope. They closed in
| 2018. Weird Stuff Warehouse closed in 2018. Edmund Scientific in
| New Jersey closed in 2001. Electronic Surplus [2] is "temporarily
| closed for maintenance. Fair Radio Sales in Lima, OH closed in
| 2023.[1]
|
| It's cheaper to buy the new stuff from Shenzhen than the old
| stuff.
|
| [1] https://fairradio.com/
|
| [2] https://www.electronicsurplus.com/
| bagful wrote:
| AllElectronics in CA, too. I bought out their 10k dual-taper
| A/C pots during their closing sale; an unusual but powerful
| taper for audio electronics.
| citizenpaul wrote:
| I understand lots of people have some pleasant
| memories....but.... While I didn't know what American Science and
| surplus are, based on looking at the website they are peddlers of
| various "store to landfill" junk. Like lots of nostalgic things
| I'm sure its sad to see it go but it doesn't appear to be the
| loss of anything significant and doesn't seem to be worth
| "saving".
| user_7832 wrote:
| A quick search shows lots of vintage/ex-military
| "surplus"/parts. Microscopes and optics abound. There are lots
| of collectors and nerds who'd be happy to buy a pump or an
| encoder or whatnot (Chris Boden from YouTube, maybe even Alex
| from Technology Conmections - would be delighted.)
|
| Plus, who doesn't want a life size 6'4" terracotta warrior for
| their house to silently take guard? You call it landfill, I say
| it's whimsical and fun. Would a Halloween mask that brings a
| lot of fun also be something you'd consider landfill suited?
| o0-0o wrote:
| The Best
| CalRobert wrote:
| Their printed catalogs were a work of fabulous, goofy, zany art.
| Great store
| myself248 wrote:
| Donated. Sciplus (under their old name of Jerryco) was a
| significant part of my upbringing, whether they realized it or
| not.
|
| *wavy flashback transition*
|
| As a kid from Michigan, I grew up reading the Jerryco catalog and
| asking my parents about weird phrases therein, which is how I
| learned _all sorts_ of cultural references that were, in
| retrospect, probably not what most folks expected their young
| children to be asking about. I also learned a lot more context
| than I got from the dry, factual descriptions in the Edmund
| Scientific catalog. (Or the Lab Safety Supply catalog, for that
| matter. I evidently really liked reading catalogs.)
|
| To this day, I have a tote labeled "Bottles, boxes, and bags",
| after their catalog section.
|
| So when the family took a trip to Chicago, we did a bunch of
| touristy stuff that I don't remember in the slightest, and also a
| side-trip to the Jerryco store. It was heaven, it was Mecca, it
| was Woodstock, it was a candy store, it was a hands-on science
| museum, all these things at once and more. I devoured it -- a
| physical tactile experience reflecting the vast weirdness and
| limitless possibilities of the catalog! I wanted one of
| _everything_ but had to restrict myself to a few handfuls,
| because I was 8 and had no money and my parents didn 't have much
| either. With parental and staff guidance, I picked out some stuff
| I thought might be fun to play with -- some solar cells (exotic
| tech in the 80s!), a couple switches I liked the feel of, some
| motors, who knows what else.
|
| Those are the items I remember because, years later in my teens,
| those different types of solar cells were the foundation of an
| award-winning science fair project testing their efficiency under
| different types of light. In my twenties, one of those rocker
| switches, still kicking around my parts drawer, ended up being
| the perfect size to replace a failed switch in a spotlight I was
| repairing. In my thirties, one of those motors snuck into the
| back of an engineering demonstration that needed a bit more grunt
| than the stock Lego motor could provide.
|
| Three decades of engineering usefulness, from one trip at age 8.
| Beat that.
|
| I've visited one other time, in 2012 or thereabouts, to the
| Geneva store. It wasn't quite as vast as the store in my memory,
| perhaps due to the whole "growing up" thing, or perhaps Geneva
| just isn't as big as Park Ridge. But it was every bit as magical.
| Packed to the gills with obscure stuff, quirky signage and decor,
| and tempting prices. And I could see other young scientists and
| engineers prowling the aisles, getting their hands on surplus
| that cost some business megabucks when it was new, turning these
| weird mechanisms over in their hands until they made sense,
| synthesizing new uses...
| Quenby wrote:
| I've always loved places like this. A bunch of weird little parts
| that feel like digging through a forgotten treasure chest. Every
| time, it's like unlocking a small piece of the world. Really hope
| they can keep going. These kinds of imaginative little corners
| are getting rarer and rarer these days.
| Wistar wrote:
| Years ago, my spouse thought I had marked an item in a sciplus
| catalog and so bought it for me as a birthday gift. I unwrapped
| it to find a plain brown box with an L-shaped metal fitting of
| some sort with a single black insulated wire that's terminated
| with a spade lug.
|
| I have never figured out what it is.
| rubit_xxx17 wrote:
| Maybe to ground a metal workbench?
| myself248 wrote:
| We need a photo!
| RankingMember wrote:
| Sounds like a plumbus
| tylervigen wrote:
| If you're anywhere near Minnesota, this store has exactly the
| same vibes as Ax Man Surplus: https://www.ax-
| man.com/collections/all-products
|
| Their website doesn't have it, but the handwritten joke signs in
| the store are the best.
| kragen wrote:
| I knew them as Jerryco in my childhood:
|
| > _And the business was launched as American Lens & Photo.
|
| > After the Second World War the company expanded, fed by war
| surplus. Eventually, Al opened a retail store on Chicago's
| Northwest side called American Science Center and started
| carrying educational science items.
|
| > (...) In 1979 he started a catalog operation under the name
| "Jerryco" and in 1981 he opened a second store, in Milwaukee._
| swayvil wrote:
| Nugatory Contrivances is a way better name imo. But ya, long live
| them.
| rubit_xxx17 wrote:
| This fundraiser is important to many at HN, and I think it would
| be good to consider having some new category of HN like "pinned"
| for important things that shouldn't fall off quickly and allow
| users to suggest a moderator "pin" a post. Similarly pinned
| things would have "unpin" and a sufficient number of unpins would
| signal to moderator to unpin it. I'm worried that not everyone
| will see this because of the normal cycle of posts. You could
| argue that the current way works well for most things, but
| pinning is an important part of most forums.
| vanattab wrote:
| What a wonderfully weird store. If I ever need to buy an under
| powered can opener,some screen protectors for my palm pilot and I
| life size terracotta warrior for $1200 without going to multiple
| places I know now where to go.
|
| https://sciplus.com/screen-protectors-2-15-16-x-2-1-4-12-pac...
|
| https://sciplus.com/under-powered-automatic-can-opener-for-p...
|
| https://sciplus.com/lifesize-terra-cotta-warrior/?searchid=1...
| os2warpman wrote:
| AS&S survived for decades selling actual science and surplus, now
| it seems their focus has shifted to alibaba junk consumer goods
| and flea market reject merchandise.
|
| A decade ago if you searched for toggle switches on their website
| you would have gotten dozens and dozens of results.
|
| Now there are six, and only two of them are actual toggle
| switches.
|
| Did all of the science and surplus run out?
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| The demand ran out. Gen Z and Gen Alpha don't know how this
| stuff works.
| _dark_matter_ wrote:
| What a ridiculous comment. Of course lots of Gen Zers know
| how electronics work. The oldest Gen alphaers turned 15 this
| year.
| joezydeco wrote:
| I'm guessing the surplus ran out. I would go to the Chicago
| area stores a lot and could easily recognize which companies
| were dumping spare/reject assemblies and other shrapnel related
| to their work. Those companies all moved to Mexico or Asia, so
| there's nothing left to dump.
| ghaff wrote:
| That sort of happened with Army surplus stores too for
| largely different reasons. Don't even know of one around
| where I live any longer.
| gopher_space wrote:
| There's more competition and no real need for companies to do
| online or reserve sales of their surplus. They might have
| been able to place orders or holds previously.
| joezydeco wrote:
| The "surplus" at AS&S was more about _manufacturing_
| surplus. Spare parts and bulbs, loose switches and chips,
| wires, unpopulated PCBs with mystery origins, etc.
| some_random wrote:
| I'm not familiar with the science surplus side, but on the
| militaria side the answer is basically yes. There absolutely is
| still a ton of surplus but it's nowhere near as cheap and
| limitless as it used to be.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| Aside from everyone else's replies, there's also the fact that
| the niche is smaller now.
|
| Instead of companies dumping their excess stock on whoever
| offers to buy it, instead they're dumping it all on Amazon and
| ebay. A little more work but they get more money for it,
| meaning that there is less new overstock to go around.
|
| I hope they make it, we need more stores with personality like
| American Science. I plan on making a trip out that way now that
| I know where it's located.
| jonathanrmumm wrote:
| Remember my dad taking me here all the time and being amazed by
| aisles full of bins of random parts. Made you want to tinker.
| wellthisisgreat wrote:
| Anything like this in New York?
| uxp100 wrote:
| I have spent many afternoons going to Lost World of Wonders,
| American Science and Surplus, and the thrift next door is decent
| too. Maybe cap it off with mediocre tacos at Taqueria Buenavista,
| or go to West Allis Cheese and Sausage. Fun times in west Allis.
|
| However, tbh, ASS isn't that great. I wish it was better.
| Weirder. Larger. People have been posting about other stores such
| as Weird Stuff Warehouse in Sunnyvale, and tbh, that was way more
| interesting on the tech side. I've got some milsurp bags there I
| like, and occasionally an electronics part or two, but it's just
| ok. I bought a pretty nice vacuum there once too. So I'll miss it
| if it goes, but I kinda get why.
| salynchnew wrote:
| Tangentially related: SCRAP in SF is looking for a new location.
|
| https://www.scrap-sf.org/newhome
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