[Milsurplus] Re: [The WS No.19 Group] "The 861 Treasure" (Tales of Surplus Glory)

[J. Forster]

Surplus dealers can be a touchy lot. Here's a true story from about 1963:

I used to frequent a surplus store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called Eli Heffron &
Sons. Because I was a frequent customer, I got to be there at the unloading of the truck
and get first whack at the new stuff. Well, one day the truck came in after a trip to
New York and IBM. The manifest listed thousands of core memories. In those days, they
were really hot.

The truck was unloaded and the owner was frantically looking for the memory he had paid
dearly for, without luck. Then I found a cardboard box with little bottles of tiny
donuts. The dealer had misread the bid and had paid lots for a bunch of essentially
useless cores. He was NOT happy.  8=))

-John