Shopping

Buying electronics on eBay; my favorite way to kill time :)
It's amazing how little you pay for hundreds of components, most of the time it's less than what you'd pay for shipping alone if you'd buy it from some European supplier like Conrad or Elfa. Sure, I have to wait a week or two for the items to arrive, but who cares? Here's a small selection of items that have arrived in the past week:

6 meter of rainbow flat cable, 100 meter 22AWG wire, 100 8P dupont connector housings, 10 electrolytic capacitors, 50 ceramic smd caps, 200 sot-23 transistors, 200 RGB LEDs and 5000 1K ohm 0603 resistors.

Some people ask me if I'm afraid to get ripped off. The answer is no, not really. I've done nearly 100 transactions in the last couple of years, only 1 never arrived, and I blame that on the mail :) None of the items on the photo above have cost me more than $20, so even if an item never arrives, I never lose a significant amount of money. I'd be more bummed by having to wait two more weeks :)

I have a few favorite sellers which I'll pick if the difference isn't too big. They are, in no particular order:
Ele-parts
G&C supermarket
Tayda2009

But most of the time, I'll just try to find the cheapest ;)