I agree, but they were out of the parts business well before Arduino and Raspberry Pi were a thing. The last Radio Shack in my area that stocked resistors closed in 2006. There's none near me now, but since ~2000 they'd been mostly phone stores that also carried the occasional batteries and cables.

yep, my local radio shack, in the end, started to start stocking some interesting stuff ... and they had a series of drawers that had a variety of resistors, leds, and other such things that you could pick through. But as you said, too little too late. They could have taken the lead on the maker movement, given that they had the infrastructure in place ... but despite them having this stuff, the workers knew little to nothing anytime I asked them a question, they were just there to take the money at POS and restock the shelves :(