[PVRCNC] Amidon toroid & other product group buy

[Pete Soper]

Last night I discovered Amidon's <https://www.amidoncorp.com/> cheapest 
shipping cost appears to be $21. This is onerous for a small order with 
a total for parts of $30.70 (less than half the total if I got the parts 
off Amazon).  So I naturally wondered if the members of this august 
group may have been put off too. Well fear not, as I'm prepared to do a 
group buy for us. Send me your part numbers and quantities of parts 
Amidon has in stock by email or bring a list with your name on it to the 
meeting Thursday and I'll bring the parts to the March meeting with tax 
and shipping added for your fraction of the total. If you're so 
inclined, a .xlsx file by email would be much appreciated. :-) Those in 
PVRCNC/East that can't make it to the meeting might get free delivery or 
partial commute. Talking to you, *N4AF*. :-)

To be clear, Amazon (and EBay) are competitive for some parts , but for 
others there is a greater than 4X penalty in return for the convenience. 
It appears the further from mainstream the part, the worse the price 
difference, and of course a great many Amidon parts are unobtainium via 
the web. Also FYI Amidon does not appear to offer quantity discounts 
visible to their web interface. Finally, if one of the major parts 
houses such as Digikey has a Fair Rite equivalent, that's often the 
better route (and Digikey offers cheap USPS shipping).

Regards,
Pete AD4L