Surplus waves

Has anyone else noticed that there are "waves" of certain kinds of equipment being surplussed all at once? Its most readily apparent when monitoring govliquidation.com because the military tends to surplus an item across and entire force (Navy, Air Force, Army, etc.) and scads of the stuff shows up all at once. However, I see it as well in commercial circles. A new generation of technology is deployed and an entire wave of the old technology is surplussed all at once. After that big wave subsides, those items will be hard to find. I think these surplus waves are what people are remembering when they say "VT100s are all over the place, dirt cheap" because they remember the VT100 surplus wave when you could barely walk through a surplus house without tripping over one. Nowadays they are few and far between. I seem to recall some discussions of "ownership humps" over the lifetime of equipment. Initially noone, or few, owns it. Then lots of people own it. Then some people own it because lots of people surplus it and there's a glut in the secondary market. Then noone, or few, owns it again and the secondary market is pricey for spares. Then noone owns it anymore and the secondary market is overpriced, still thinking people need spares. Eventually the secondary market crashes and they dump their holdings and collectors might be able to experience a slight secondary surplus wave. After that, its hen's teeth time. Thoughts? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html> Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>