Whee to get Good Cheap Electronic Parts.

[Geek-9pm]

Whee to get Good Cheap Electronic Parts.
A recommendation.
The image below is from my all-time favorite surplus vendor.

If you want relays, switches, resistors and small electronic parts, that y might have what you want. This stuff is surplus or overstocked items. Prices are near the wholesale price even in small quantities.
No, this is  not the stuff you want for a real clean reliable project. Bu if cost is a factor you could do worse.
The firm y is called 'All Electronics' and in in California.

That is my choice. What is yours?

Where do you get low-cost electronic parts?

[artbuc]

Mouser is absolutely first rate. Great selection, great customer service and lightening fast shipping.

[DaveLembke]

I use mainly Mouser as well. Sometimes I have to use Digikey, and if its something that I cant wait for it to be shipped and need in immediately I will give Radio Shack a try at it; however Radio Shack upon every consecutive visit is more and more disappointing in both parts selection diminishing in options and availability as well as their prices on everything is just so expensive anymore.

With Mouser they generally have good prices for good parts. So if I need parts and need them soon, but not immediately I will buy through them and get them shipped. Lately my business with them has been in buying 6.3volt capacitors to replace failed caps on some motherboards for some friends who didnt want to part with their older systems.

Digikey I have used when looking for a hard to get part and its a matter of Mouser stating they are out of stock and Digikey stating that they have 118 in stock and I buy what I need at a premium such as some older chips that are scarce but the repair required that specific chip and no other substitution due to timing ( speed of the chip ).

Radio Shack seems like these days its a gamble whether they have what I need or not. Such as I needed some 1/4watt 470 ohm resistors for a project and they didnt have any, so I ended up having to place 2 x 1k ohm resistors parallel to make 500 ohms to get by with that. Plus the cost for the resistors was like $1.49 for 5 resistors and so I was paying for the convenience of being able to have the parts immediately at 60 cents per 500 ohm resistor stack. Fortunately I only needed 2 of these 500ohm solutions to work in series with LED's from a 5V source as indicators for a project where the LEDs were used to indicate signal state of Low or High to know when somethig was disabled or enabled. The last large purchase I made at Radio Shack was in 2004 when I bought my Compaq Presario S6030NX computer for $549.99 and their computer they had was the cheapest option at the time between local stores for an off the shelf computer that had an AGP port for a video card to be added to turn an off the shelf computer with weak integrated video into a gaming system for $120 extra in the cost of the video card for the GeForce FX-5200 from Staples that I probably could have saved money buying elsewhere, but you usually always pay extra for having parts immediately.

Going to check out the place you shared here... quality might not all be there in the prices, but some stuff is worth the gamble.

[Computer_Commando]

...That is my choice. What is yours?
Where do you get low-cost electronic parts?

http://www.mpja.com/

[Geek-9pm]

Thanks. Didn't know about MPJA
Found their PDF Catalog.
https://www.mpja.com/pdf/mpja_color_catalog.pdf

[DaveLembke]

I too didnt know about MPJA and I signed up to receive a catalog in the mail. Thanks for sharing 

[Hugh_Jazscheens]

eBay. If you want Radio Shack components, search for them on eBay by RS part number. They're often cheaper than RS stores and website and have free shipping from the US. Otherwise, I still buy a lot of items on eBay from Chinese vendors for even less. Just depends on what you're looking for.

Also Jameco and Digi-key. There are lots of specialty vendors for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc.

I often end up at Mouser because their selection is very large, comparison tool is fast and fairly intuitive, prices are fair, spec sheets are usually available, and shipping is cheap and fast. But they list lots of stuff that they don't have in stock right now, so check quantities on-hand. They answer the phone if you need some hand-holding.