20 Jul
2007
20 Jul
'07
7:42 a.m.
On 7/20/07, Pete Turnbull <pete at dunnington.plus.com> wrote:
?6.15, it tells me on the website -- but it also says
it is no longer
stocked, and it was old Newark stock held in the US. If you look for
other neons on the Farnell websites, especially T2 size (which is what
that part was) they vary in price from 9 pence (?0.09) to about 40 pence
each.
So what was it about that _particular_ part that resulted in a ?6
price? I've seen inventory creep on DEC parts that were old at the
time - case in point - the left and right tape guides for the TU56
DECtape transport were listed as spares at many times what might be
expected as a reasonable price for a componentless hunk of polished
metal. When I asked about it, I was told that they probably hadn't
sold any in years, but they were still on the book and most likely
still taking up shelf space in the warehouse. Every year, I was told,
they'd inventory them, then review the price, which trended upwards by
some magic formula to fold in inflation and some fraction of the cost
of the warehouse for "storage" of the parts. After ten years of this,
the price was absurd (don't recall exact amounts), but there it was.
Could this be a similar case? A particular part number in their
database that gets annually reevaluated until it's nearly two orders
of magnitude higher than equivalent parts?
-ethan