Surplus stores have been replaced by online auctions.[1] If you have something really obscure, you might find a buyer on online. Piling the stuff up locally means most of it sits there for years.
replyWeird Stuff Warehouse. Haltek. HSC. All gone. Excess Solutions moved online. Jameco took down their "open to public" sign. Anchor Electronics [2] is perhaps the only remaining electronics surplus place in Silicon Valley you can visit in person.
Many of those online auction sites are still surplus warehouses, but they just don’t need to operate as retail operations. You can still visit and inspect the goods when they’re listed.
replyA favourite in Australia that emerged over the last ten or so years is Grays Online [1], which sell everything from estate sales and office equipment, to military vehicles and mining machinery.
(Mentioning the name often made people think I was into alien conspiracies, which had some parallels to the subject of this post.)
I heard that it was effectively a hasmat site for quite some time with spills of several nasty things including mercury. Also I have fond memories from I popped in there to get some random tech things in the 1990s.
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