End of Surplus?

Yes. My thought is that if you walk into the surplus joint in person, and negotiate the purchase of a piece of equipment that is sitting there, the federal government has no power (constitutional authority) to prevent the sale, since it is not interstate commerce. And you could probably spend twenty years and millions of dollars trying to fight it. :-( It sounds fishy to me. Have any other local surplus dealers said anything similar? Can you get them to show you any paperwork they received notifying them of this requirement, or tell you what law (U.S. Code) or Regulation (Code of Federal Regulations) they're complying with? It's not like the government can just impose something like this without any official paperwork. It seems more likely that the one dealer has decided that he doesn't want to hassle with the public any more, and is trying to shift the blame to the government. Eric