Scrounging

Vendors who sell surplus

Scrounging

Postby Bill Fain » Sat Jul 17, 2010 6:07 pm

OK, I realize that I am not Mr. Miyagi, but rather a Karate kid when it comes to scrounging. I am always willing to learn from the “masters” when it comes to scrounging and surplus hunting. I have however, learned a few things along the way which I would like to share. A lot of these ideas and places may already exist on places like www.amasci.com and other sites and I have probably borrowed a few ideas from them, but since this isn’t a school paper and I have no intent of making a profit or gaining recognition, so here goes.

I have found that one of the best places to obtain possible scientific items or building materials is the dumpster. Besides, this is a “green” thing to do; recycling right? I constantly scour for microwave ovens, old TV’s and any other goodies they might contain. I always carry a hoe and chain with hook, in the back of my truck. Most all municipalities frown against scavenging, so take a bag of garbage with you so it looks like you are just throwing stuff away. Always wear heavy leather gloves and NEVER get into a dumpster. There are serious things that can harm you in there. I use the hoe and chain to catch hold of items and bring them to the top (just got a Craftsman 3hp air compressor out two weeks ago). There are better times to look as well. Saturdays are a good time to find useful stuff that people might be throwing away as they are more likely to be house cleaning on their day off. Sundays are a bad day, because people are probably throwing away general household trash from the weekend like food and beer cans etc. The middle of weekdays is generally pretty good as contractors tend to throw away stuff after a job (even though most dumpsters aren’t supposed to be commercial). In my area they used to have something called “Quarterly trash pickup” where you would put out heavy items and the sanitation dept would come by and pick them up. After massive traffic jams by pickup trucks, early ,each scheduled morning, they have changed the tactic to a street by date basis. I can still cruse around and find stuff though. Haven’t tried commercial dumpster scavenging as this might be considered trespassing.

Second hand and surplus stores abound these days and are good sources for stuff. Goodwill (Goodwill has an online store as well), Disabled American Veterans, Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity are only a few and there are a lot of other stores operated by churches and non-profits as well as for profit stores.

Yard Sales are always good. I drive by at low speed and notice what the “flavor” of the sale might be. If it’s all clothes etc, I drive on by. If I see a lot of household stuff, I might decide to pull over. I would imagine, but have not had first- hand experience, that people in technology rich areas like the 128 in Boston or the 101 in San Francisco may have “better” yard sales than most.

Scrap Yards have a cornucopia of stuff. It’s best to find a locally owned scrap yard where the owner is more likely to let you look around. If you come in with long pants, a hard hat, gloves and heavy shoes, he is more likely to let you in than if you’re wearing shorts and sandals. You might explain to him that you’re an amateur scientist and are looking for raw materials to build things.

Another idea is to use Craigslist. It’s a real pain to search every locality on there, but you can use a search tool called www.searchallcraigs.com and put in what you’re looking for. It lists it by geographical part of the country and uses all of the Google Boolean modifiers etc. “Physicist or Chemist estate sale” listings don’t come by very often, but will be a gold mine, if you can find one local to attend.

University sales and stores. In my area, Virginia Tech http://www.purch.vt.edu/Surplus/surplus.html, has a sale roughly each month. You might find old football jerseys or a scanning electron microscope, just have to look at their sale bulletin. Try looking by the university name and include the word “surplus” in the search. The dumpsters at University engineering shops may be rich with stuff. It’s probably best to get a Grad student to search for you so you won’t get in trouble. Some Universities still have surplus stores for the general public. A lot of schools and municipalities have started listing on www.govdeals.com. You can sign up for it , have a search bot look for what you want, and have it e-mail you when it finds it. You can then decide if you want to bid on it or not. If the item is out of driving range, some of these places have people that will package up your winning items and ship them to you for a fee. Never bid on something and not follow through or you will be black listed and never allowed to use the site again. The government has a regular military surplus site as well: www.govliquidation.com. Same rules apply about following through and maybe finding a third party shipper as well. There are commercial sites too, like www.labx.com that you can bid on scientific stuff. Oh, Almost forgot, MIT http://w1mx.mit.edu/flea-at-mithas a swap fest every week or two in Boston.

National Labs. There are DOD ran national labs scattered across the country. Some may still have independent sales to the public, but a lot have been listing on: http://bentleysauction.com. The sales are usually conducted on site, but by this third party. I understand You have to pay a certain fee up front to bid (even if you buy nothing). It may be best if you know a reseller that is going and have them bid for you. You probably don’t want to buy those 25 toilet seats that happen to be in the same lot as the HP signal generator you’re interested in. I think they also have online bidding for certain items as well.

Nationally know surplus stores. There are places that are well known for selling scientific and industrial surplus. The Black Hole in Los Alamos, NM http://www.blackholesurplus.com/is one. Their previous owner died this past year and his brother is running it now. You’ll have to call them to find out hours, but last time I checked they are open Tues through Saturday. They have no idea what they have, so you have to go there in person. Another two are Apex Electronics http://www.apexelectronic.com/and Norton Sales http://www.nortonsalesinc.com/in Los Angeles. We plan on keeping an up-to-date list of places on this site.

Online surplus stores. We plan on listing these stores in another section of the site; please look there.http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=32

Ebay. You pretty much can find anything on ebay and I won’t go into how to use it here; as you probably know anyway. One useful site though is: www.spellingsearch.com. If somebody misspells the listing, you may be bidding against a lot less people. You can also try Ebay in other countries. A lot of times, they will have things you can’t find in the US, but shipping may be prohibitive

Amateur Radio and “Hamfests”. These are my favorite places to find “stuff". The www.arrl.org maintains a list of amateur radio swapfests. First you might want to make a quick pass, noting the location of everything, and then come back later. I try to get to the fest early to get the first pick. It may also be helpful to bring a buddy and be in contact by radio if either of you sees a good deal. (you can probably use FRS radios as most Hams will be using Ham radios to talk to each other). If you think something has a good price, it does. It won’t be there when you come back because it was a good price, so buy it then. If you find something that is too high or you don’t really need it, come back toward the end of the show and make an offer. After being there all day people don’t want to load up boat anchors again. Bring a rolling cart, or at minimum a backpack or bag. Bring some food and water as the food at those things can be pretty bad. Make a list of what you’re looking for, but be ready for anything, because someone might just have anything for sell. The bigger the city, usually the bigger the hamfest. You usually find “better” hamfests in technology rich areas. The biggest Hamfest is in Dayton, Ohio in May of each year.

Magazines and Classifieds. Nuts and Volts magazine http://www.nutsvolts.com/and Make Magazine http://makezine.com/have classifieds that contain listings of swapfests as well as parts suppliers. Make also sponsors "Maker Faires" in various communities. You usually can pick up a lot of parts and stuff at those.

Chemicals. Really, Really old hardware stores tend to have chemicals that you can’t buy anymore. Pool supply stores tend to have a few other chemicals. There are sites on the web that explain where you might find the chemicals you need for science experiments. We may list links to them. -bill
User avatar
Bill Fain
 
Posts: 90
Joined: Sat Jul 17, 2010 10:23 am

Return to Surplus

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests

cron