[Milsurplus] Dayton

[Peter Gottlieb]

The surplus business has always been a game of trying to squeeze the most 
possible out of what the dealers were able to get a hold of.  I remember a lot 
of them had prices that were outrageous, prices they "extrapolated" from the way 
a piece of equipment looked.  The better dealers learned what sold and what 
didn't, and they had a reasonable turnover, but the others sat on mountains of 
slow moving overpriced obscure stuff which eventually ended up in landfills when 
they went bankrupt.  A few times I made offers on whole piles of stuff that sat 
for years, only to be rebuffed with phrases like "you think I'm a fool?  You are 
going to turn around and sell that for ENORMOUS profit!"

Through the government's complete disinterest and paranoia, to the dealer's 
incompetent greed, most surplus equipment was destined for the the landfill 
regardless of our interest.

Too bad they didn't just spread out all the stuff in huge warehouses and invite 
all licensed amateurs to pick over it and only when they done move it to the 
scrap metal shredders.

Peter




Hue Miller wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mike Morrow" <kk5f at earthlink.net>
> 
>>Whenever we lament the prices in our 40 to 60-year old surplus catalogs and ads, run those prices
> 
> you see against the government's inflation calculator at http://www.bls.gov/cpi/home.htm .  Many
> things are cheaper than they've ever been, when you can find them for sale.
> 
> That's why i really wonder at the prices asked for some ham-useless gear in the old
> catalogs and ads, the ARR-2s, BC-645's, RAY, oddball stuff like that with really
> limited conversion outcomes - scale the prices up and you see even those oddballs
> were in no way giveaways. -Hue Miller
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