Electronics Flea Market | Hacker News Reader

Electronics Flea Market

electronicsfleamarket.com

114 pointsbittercynic38 comments

For those in Southern California, the legendary W6TRW swap meet is up and running again. As always, last Saturday of the month, 7am until 11:30am. It’s in Redondo Beach. Brilliant nerdy stuff from every decade from the 40’s to the present. A fair amount of tacky stuff, but a lot of hidden gems also.

This is amazing to read, I grew up going to that swap meet... and as an adult I really miss going to that.

Now that I hear it’s running, I’ll be there the next time I go to LA.

See you there my friend :)

For those in the Boston area, the next SwapFest is on 17th April at MIT :

https://w1mx.mit.edu/flea-at-mit/

As long as we're listing electronics flea markets nationwide, I might as well mention the grand-daddy of them all, the Dayton Hamvention:

https://hamvention.org/

First one since 2019! But it’s back on the normal monthly schedule for the 2022 Spring-Fall season.

"New hours are from 7:00AM until 12:00 Noon" seems like a really poor choice of time. I know plenty of people who are into electronics who'd be more likely to show up if this was from midnight to 5 am (not suggesting that that would be a good time, just that this time seems absurd when you're targeting geeks and maybe extending it into the afternoon would be a good idea).

I have no experience with this event, but it's sort of common in amateur radio communities that events are scheduled around typical retiree hours (think "early bird special"). It can make it difficult for younger working people to attend, and given the legendary cliquishness of some of those communities it may be intentional. Again I know nothing about this specific event or the organizers so I'm not pointing fingers.

The ‘old hours’ had an informal start at around 5AM!

Very fond memories of the Foothill College Swap Meet.

With that and Weird Stuff Warehouse, I was able to put together a complete TRS-80 Color Computer rig in a matter of hours. The cassette recorder cable was a particularly nice find.

For people in the UK who would like something similar:

Dunstable Downs Radio Boot Sale, 22nd of May 2022, Luton

http://www.ddrcbootsale.org/

The Electronics Flea Market is finally back!

Most electronics are pretty useless without documentation/datasheets.

Some components might be self-explanatory from their inscriptions, like capacitors or resistors, but with undocumented semiconductors its instant game-over. Worst case are ASICs in epoxy resin...

I haven’t been to this flea in about 5 years, but this is a flea run by a ham club, not like some mysterious unlabeled chips in a shenzhen alley. Plenty of old (10 years) computers, some very old (40 years) computers, radios (vintage AM receivers), radios (amateur radio), loose tubes of common varieties, test equipment, military surplus, misc cheap junk (bad bicycle lights), guitar amps, and a few electronics components (most commonly higher power LEDs on boards IIRC)

These types of meetings are more targeted towards electronics whose primary functions aren't governed by software- think like an oscilloscope that runs directly off of a series of chips instead of modern ones composed of an fully virtual stack on top of an operating system. So long as said components fall within reasonable specs (analog is typically much more forgiving than digital) and chips replaced with facsimiles these units can have a second life.

This problem is not specific to software-related items. You can't really use an transistor if you don't know its polarity, pin out, amplification curves and current limits...

I haven't lived in SV since 1993, but things like this sure make me miss it.

Moved there in 1995 and it was amazing.

Sadly, it got less amazing as the decades marched on and Silicon Valley became Web Valley (now Social Valley?).

Those days: Computer Literacy bookstore, Disk Drive Depot... Fry's went mainstream and then faded, Weirdstuff gone, Haltek, several other surplus stores gone whose names escape me. The Saturday crawl from one surplus store to another across Mountain View and Sunnyvale used to be worth getting up early for.

There was Halted and that place in San Carlos that sold things like surplus metal subassemblies.

There’s still Excess Solutions in San Jose. They bought out Halted’s stock a few years ago.

Yeah, not the same somehow. I stopped by twice over the past year or so but the mojo is gone.

As good a thread as any in which to post this, anyone else with a basement full of electronics parts interested in federating a web store for one-offs and interesting finds?

I have acquired plenty of cool stuff, but nothing in significant enough quantities to make it as an electronics supplier. I'm thinking more curated antique store vibe.

Does anyone know of a good NYC analog for this?

I don't know about these days, but back in the 1980s there were a number of electronics surplus stores located on Canal St, below SoHo. I used to pop in now and then to buy stuff. They were part of a larger ecosystem of industrial supply stores left over from the days when SoHo was a factory district. Sadly, the last time I was down there no electronics stores remained.

VCF East is in Wall, NJ,coming up on April 22nd this year ... https://vcfed.org/events/vintage-computer-festival-east/vcf-...

There used to be some sort of frequent "Expo" - which was more of a flea market to me - that took place in Secaucus, NJ...and i bought plenty of components and a PC computer or two there back in the early 2000s. Nowadays, i just assume there isn't anything like that and just look for stuff on ebay, craigslist, used/refurbished sections of newegg, amazon, etc.

Best one I know of that might still be operating is Hall of Science Amateur Radio Club[0]...

[0] https://www.hosarc.org/

You just missed the Trenton Computer Festival which has been going on since 76. It's usually in mid March.

Ebay?

Oh, is he up in NYC now? Good for him - I hate to hear he's left Baltimore, but I can't say I haven't thought his talents a little wasted here.

The guy on 5th with the Buick

Didn't know about this, thanks for informing those of us in the sf bay area.

This is great! I have a garage full of old gear that I don’t want to put in the landfill but it is still worth a few dollars. Wish I had heard of this earlier this week to make it.

All being well there’ll be another one next month!

I moved from Sunnyvale, CA to Austin, TX last year. I don’t miss much, but I sure am sad to be missing out on this!

If you like to buy electronics by the pound, this is the best deal.

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