The Electronics Flea Market tentatively resumes on March 10, 2024. The planned location (directions) is parking lot 3 at West Valley College in Saratoga:
West Valley College
14000 Fruitvale Ave
Saratoga, California 95070
> Sellers must register with form CDTFA-410-D upon entry to the flea market as required by the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration.
wow, California has thought of everything!
> For example, a person who is disposing of unwanted household items, and does this no more than twice in
any twelve-month period, is generally considered to be an occasional seller
Sounds unfortunate if your unwanted stuff is illiquid, but I guess there's some wiggle room if the official form phrases it that way
Had fun browsing there twenty years ago after a fellow older tinkerer told me about it. I once managed to get a motherboard for cheap to replace my friend’s “server” that was hosting his homepage over his very fast at the time 768kbps DSL connection.
I'd love to see what shows up at a Silicon Valley hamfest. Having it outdoors cuts way down on Covid risks, so that's a big time plus. Does anyone have any good stories about unusual finds at past events?
This year, I bought an HP 5334A universal counter for $60 at the flea market. A week later, I bought an HP 5384A frequency counter through Craigslist from a local in Los Altos.
When I told him about the 5334A purchase, he replied “Oh yeah, I was the project lead for that one.”
I have a friend whose bucket list included owning an Atomic Clock. We ended up repairing several HP 5061Bs along the way. We did the X/Y axis oscilloscope comparison of two clocks, it was a diagonal line when we went to lunch, and the same diagonal line when we got back... amazing stuff.
I think that makes me a qualified Quantum Mechanic. ;-)
Do my Rubidium references (yes, plural) count? They're not quite as stable as a Cesium-based 5061, but I believe they use the same principle so they’re technically also atomic clocks.
Yes they count, but they use a completely different principle of operation.
The Cesium beam clock actually has a stream of atoms flowing through it, which is finite, leading to tube lifetimes of a decade or less.
The rubidium clock has a number of cells of rubidium gas, one of which is a light source, the other of which gets hit with RF, and if the frequency is just right, it absorbes about 1% of the light before it hits the detector.
A much smaller physics package, to be sure. They do drift, though, a tiny bit.
I’d been going since the mid 80s when it was “the foothill flea market” colloquially. I can’t say I’ve ever found any “wow, this is unique” things - honestly, most of the time it’s “neat” things that come home with me, get played with for a few years, and then I’ll buffer everything collected up and sell at the next flea market. In this way the hobby can be mostly self supporting - but it’s also very satisfying to return home with an empty station wagon.
It’s also a great way to reunite with coworkers from times past, although I have really a bad memory for faces.
I was able to attend VCF Midwest back in 2022, and it was overwhelming, and I didn't have any money to spend. I hope to correct this situation in 2024.
Don't count out local hamfests. Yeah, some tiny ones are a little disappointing, but bigger cities usually have respectable events. Even if you're not into ham radio, you'll find plenty of non-radio tech stuff. And there there's the Dayton (OH) Hamvention which is /huge/ - people/groups/vendors drive in from all over the US and setup flea market booths, to sell and buy stuff, but also to just sit around and talk tech with the other attendees.
I remember going to this in the 80's and 90s'. Was astounding what you could find. Is it still going? I moved to Florida in the early 00's but still have family in the Dayton area....
I used to go as a kid in the 80's with my dad every year. The Hara Arena where it was held is no more. It was closed up for years and was finally torn down a couple years ago. But the Hamvention is still going on at a new location.
Yeah, back in the midwest after having spent 26 years in "The Valley" (no, not that valley, Silicon Valley).
I hit the Electronics Flea Market only a few times because, back then, I was not a morning person. I remember showing up at 7:00 AM or so once when the dark was just lifting and seeing people leaving with their small wire rolling carts filled with electronics. I imagined that all the good stuff got scooped up at 6:00.
More often though I would do the "Saturday crawl" to all the surplus electronics stores — when there were a lot of surplus electronics stores. Sadly over the decades I saw them all but disappear entirely.
It's probably just as well I am back in the midwest though. I'm already too much of a hoarder.
Surplus electronics stores were the absolute best thing about the 80s into 90s, but they're mostly all dead now.
Which is annoying, because back in the 90s you had hell to pay to get anything to work with a computer (usually abusing the parallel port); now any Raspberry Pi can easily control random doodads you might find, but there's no place to find them.
The most important information:
The Electronics Flea Market tentatively resumes on March 10, 2024. The planned location (directions) is parking lot 3 at West Valley College in Saratoga:
West Valley College 14000 Fruitvale Ave Saratoga, California 95070
The hours are from 6:00AM until 12:00 Noon.