EEVblog #737 - World's Biggest Collection Of Electronics Components

Dave uncovers that has to be one of the world's biggest and most meticulously sorted collections of vintage electronic components!
And all this sold for $405 on ebay!

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[razzintown]

Whether he has OCD or not, it's a clear example of the *great scale* of what you can do with your time, when you're not otherwise watching TV, commuting somewhere, or looking up cat pictures online. The scale of it is truly great.

[liryan]

I thought porn is banned in youtube...

[xjet]

Ah... lots of goodies from the days when stuff was designed to be fixed.  Brings a tear to my eye.   What a shame that there aren't more people recycling old parts like this and donating them to makerspaces where young kids can use them to learn about the basics of electronics.  A through-hole resistor works just the same as an 0805 SMD variety and is a lot easier to wire into a breadboard ;-)

[phoenixsmith]

What's really amazing is I didn't see any dust anywhere, even on all the old tube boxes ! He must have had constant cleaning and clean room level air filters ! I worked in a clean room making CRTs and there was way more dust than this guy !
How on Earth did this guy keep it this clean ? Especially with all the cardboard putting off dust !

[RWoody]

Is every Australian electronics engineer named David? :P

[sbreheny]

Forget about home labs, this is better than the vast majority of company/university stockrooms I've seen.

[dasdew]

BUY IT DAVE!!! BUY IT ALL AND PUT IT IN THE BASEMENT!!!

[turboslag]

This is a familiar scenario to me. I'm a member of a vintage radio club here in the UK, to raise funds to run the club they hold auctions 4 or 5 times a year. As the member ship is mostly older people, 60 years +, bereavement clear outs are frequent. Unfortunately much of it goes for very low prices and I find it very sad that cherished and life long collections are dispersed in such an unrecognised way. I know an old guy fairly locally who has a workshop very like the one in this video, amongst other things, he has 30, 000 valves, mostly NOS!! 300 oscilloscopes, a huge range of test gear, and many, many valve radios. All arranged and organised in a very ordered manner. When he goes it will most likely be dispersed to the winds, very few people have the resources to accommodate such a massive collection.
I find that the average electronics type conforms to typical characteristics, and I include myself in this.
Very often, but not always, single, an inclination to solitary pursuits, of few, very considered words, content with their own company, fastidious, generous, trustworthy, loyal, honourable, collecting inclinations, diverse interests, select group of friends and always willing to help.
We can be a strange lot!

[OneBiOzZ]

I cannot even watch the whole video it literally brings a tear to my eye

[youtubasoarus]

OCD Paradise lol. Wonderful collection.

Just to add in my 2 cents. I haven't seen a modern electronics shop with that much gear, that well sorted.

[STATFIGHTER]

Hey there, I have seen old electronics stored like this in a warehouse at the old McCoy air force base in Orlando Florida...The air force closed the base in 1973 and the warehouse was locked up for 15 + years.. One of the guys that worked for the FAA said this was left behind when they closed the base for spare parts...  I walked in the building and it was filled all the way to the ceiling with boxes and boxes of tubes, transistors and every piece of electronic equipment you could think of...WOW...   NEVER seen anything like this in my life time... He said to me, if there is anything you need get it out of here now before they clean it out... Two days later I went back to get what I could out of there and found all was gone...  I stood at the door with my jaw on the floor...  I was just blown away and found out they hauled all of the electronics to the dump..  That made me sick for over a week and now it still make me sick just thinking about it...  sometimes life sucks

[KineticWasEpicVideos]

Radio Shack went bankrupt because this guy bought them out!

[Evansmustard]

up until the 8 minute mark I had assumed this guy had died until you mentioned him going overseas. haha

[josepvabr]

Looking in the comments I have a feeling that people are missing a very important aspect about David Sparks here. Knowing nothing as I know of this guy I could only guess that this guy was or is a very lonely person. Dedicating all those thousands of hours to dessolder, catalog and organize all those parts means that he was alone while doing that.

I love electronics and sometimes I feel that I am swapping the interaction whith other human beings by doing and studying electronics. Somehow this video opened my eyes. It must be sad to end up your life and everything that you loved so much being auctioned or throwned away while no one can remenber your name or who you was.

Just a thought.

[mikeselectricstuff]

Mercury thing will be  relay/switch, not a rectifier.

[bradleymorgan]

this is a man's lifeblood... decades and decades worth of loving curation and obsessive organization. Brings a tear to my eye

[markazkk]

He was a pretty big deal in electronic repairs. I asked a few amateurs and they knew him as the parts maniac.

[tiitsaul]

you need to find the guy and interview him

[jeffhulett]

Unbelievable, I like how organized and clean the place was, thanks for filming it, if you ever get a chance to meet him you should sit him down for an interview i would love to know the back story.

[dariopellegrinosa]

Those items deserve to be in a school or university. They would be great for teaching porpouses!. Hope they found their way to that kind of institutions!