Old Muntz TV for sale Locally to me, Should I pick it up?

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

I understand what you are saying and I would seriously think about doing that if I didn't have such a tight budget to work with, and also the fact that I don't do enough repair jobs/restorations to warrant me stocking up on nearly 1000 parts just to get free shipping, it just isn't something I can do right now unfortunately.

Otherwise I would be doing what you suggested.

I honestly have probably never hit the 800 part order threshold, but I do try to make my orders as few and big as I can to maximize price break and shipping ecconomy (read that minimize cost per item in my stock).

It isn't necessary to hit any of the volume price breaks... however planning buying to do as much of that as practical for you saves you money in the long run.

Not to sound rude but complaining about spending $8 shipping to get a single 10 cents part here in a week and prefering to spend $1 on a local part that should cost 10 cents seems like a logically conflicted argument. So a cheaper alternative was suggested.

When it comes to anything new I am as cheap as they come, and proud of it!

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

I honestly have probably never hit the 800 part order threshold, but I do try to make my orders as few and big as I can to maximize price break and shipping ecconomy (read that minimize cost per item in my stock).

It isn't necessary to hit any of the volume price breaks... however planning buying to do as much of that as practical for you saves you money in the long run.

Not to sound rude but complaining about spending $8 shipping to get a single 10 cents part here in a week and prefering to spend $1 on a local part that should cost 10 cents seems like a logically conflicted argument. So a cheaper alternative was suggested.

When it comes to anything new I am as cheap as they come, and proud of it!

Well the problem is that with digikey and Mouser, in order to get free shipping you have to make a minimum $80 order, and none of my orders ever reach that minimum.

Plus when I get old radios, record players or TVs to fix up, I never know what value of capacitors are going to be in it until I open it up or look up the service manual, and seeing as half the time when I get an old radio or record player from someone I don't know what the model is until it's in my hands.

So it's kind of hard to make a bulk order of capacitors when half the time I don't even know what I'm going to need until I get the radio, record player or tv.

So to me just ordering the capacitors once I know what I need makes more sense, seeing as no two radio, record player or TV circuits are the same when it comes to what parts they will need it's kind of hard to know what parts to order in bulk and what not to order in bulk.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

Well the problem is that with digikey and Mouser, in order to get free shipping you have to make a minimum $80 order, and none of my orders ever reach that minimum.

Plus when I get old radios, record players or TVs to fix up, I never know what value of capacitors are going to be in it until I open it up or look up the service manual, and seeing as half the time when I get an old radio or record player from someone I don't know what the model is until it's in my hands.

So it's kind of hard to make a bulk order of capacitors when half the time I don't even know what I'm going to need until I get the radio, record player or tv.

So to me just ordering the capacitors once I know what I need makes more sense, seeing as no two radio, record player or TV circuits are the same when it comes to what parts they will need it's kind of hard to know what parts to order in bulk and what not to order in bulk.

Ordering exactly what you would need in advance of purchase and no more is basically impossible, but there are good ways of estimating approximate future need...in the earliest days of my restoration (when I was 10-15 years old) I my folks would only take me to places I could buy parts 1-4 times a year...I made and never discarded shopping lists and when I started pre-stocking parts to be ready to fix 80 percent of sets immediately (even if randomly given to me that day) I estimated what I need to stock in bulk by tallying up how many of each part I bought in a year's time and or how much I bought since I started and the hand full of values I needed most were the first to be bulk stocked.

Things less commonly needed like resistors you can if you keep your eyes open at swapmeets periodically find large assortments of for cheap....near the end of my no money period I found a couple of lots like that which I'm only now deleting to the point where I'm considering buying an assortment of new parts to replace (NOS carbon comp resistors sometimes are just as troublesome as the originals).

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Ordering exactly what you would need in advance of purchase and no more is basically impossible, but there are good ways of estimating approximate future need...in the earliest days of my restoration (when I was 10-15 years old) I my folks would only take me to places I could buy parts 1-4 times a year...I made and never discarded shopping lists and when I started pre-stocking parts to be ready to fix 80 percent of sets immediately (even if randomly given to me that day) I estimated what I need to stock in bulk by tallying up how many of each part I bought in a year's time and or how much I bought since I started and the hand full of values I needed most were the first to be bulk stocked.

Things less commonly needed like resistors you can if you keep your eyes open at swapmeets periodically find large assortments of for cheap....near the end of my no money period I found a couple of lots like that which I'm only now deleting to the point where I'm considering buying an assortment of new parts to replace (NOS carbon comp resistors sometimes are just as troublesome as the originals).

Yes, but the problem is that I don't have radio swap meets near me and I don't have any local electronics parts retailers near me anymore (radio shack is gone and there aren't any Fry's Electronics Stores near me either.)
The only way I can get capacitors and resistors for my repair projects is through online outlets like Antique Electronics Supply, Mouser, Digikey, Parts Express, etc. and like I said none of the radios, or record players I've worked on so far in my 15 years of working on vintage electronics have had the same values of capacitors in them (there wasn't any "standard" values in the radios or record players that I could go by to just guess what values of capacitors I was going to need in the future to order well in advance for future projects).

To illustrate what I'm talking about:
about 10 years ago worked on an old Delco radio from 1937 and it had capacitors like .01 MFD, .02 MFD, .03 MFD, .1 MFD, etc, and I unfortunately had an issue with the radio where I ended up having to remove the brand new capacitors I put into the radio and scrap the radio out because the speaker cone got damaged beyond repair and so I had those capacitors from that old Delco radio sitting in my parts stash for over 8 years before I ended up finding another radio that used those values so that I could finally use some of those capacitors that had been sitting in my capacitor stash that whole time.

So now you know why it is that I don't like to order things in advance or try to "stock up" on random capacitor values because more than likely with the way things have been for me, most of them will just sit in my stash for several years before finally getting used, which to me is a waste of money to sink $100+ into bulk ordering random capacitor values when most of them will more than likely never be used or will sit for several years before finally being used.