Are there any left?

Tottenham Court road was mostly hi-fi kit by the time I got there years ago.

There used to be a very interesting surplus/junk/treasure shop near Weymouth town bridge sadly now a Spa grocery.

In the 'fifties I used to love a good shufti after school round Cooks of Bedford for the surplus stuff, that's when they were located on the opposite side of the road to Mr.Horsenail the herbalist. Cooks have survived and flourish although these days are suppliers - among other things - of engineering tooling of the new and sparkly kind.

I used to love surplus now I am one!

Rik

Well there was H Gee in Cambridge up untill a few weeks ago when Gee's burnt down. Appropriately due to an electrical fault.

**LINK**

I did visit about 6 years back for a cheap soldering iron and the shop was identical to how I remembered from my college days including the staff.

regards Martin

Rik,

Thats a few years ago, I still use them for stuff as and when required, I find my goodies at all the vintage rally's I attend, my latest find was a milking bucket with a plaque attached which reads Listers Dursley England.

Martin P

That brings back memories. When I was at college in Bristol in early 80's I had a part time job repairing gaming machines and the Listers Dursley social club was one the sites Always a priority call, they had a habit of smashing the machine to get their payout if we didn't turn up quickly enough.
Back on topic there was Target electronics in Cherry lane at the bottom of Cheltenham road. Lots of surplus and new microtan computers. Further up Cheltenham road was Marshalls component shop.

Robert.

Pasinghams in Dale Street, Bradford. Many hours wandering round. All WW2 surplus.

Regards Ian.

Edited By Circlip on 10/09/2019 13:11:22

I can think of quite a few dating back about 20 or 30 years, but not one now. Same thing with motorbike shops, Pride and Clark, Commerfords, Deeprose, Gus Kuhn, Stratford Motorcycles, Harold Daniel, Elite Motors, and George Brown, to name but a few of the London shops I knew.

Pride and Clark - everybody got ripped off by them. I part exchanged a dynamo with them once. Years later I took it to a respected parts dealer who could not quite understand what he was looking at. They even did the manufactures. When a company was facing cash flow problems they would quickly take a batch of new bikes down to Pride and Clark and get some, a little, money to pay the workers. I think I have a P&C Matchless, a C registered 500c single.

JA

I bought a brand new Villiers Starmaker scrambles engine from P & C shortly after Villiers went bust for £80, complete with 1 3/16" Monoblock.

Sad news indeed. I used to visit him about 20 years ago when I lived near Cambridge. Always a good stock of components including some obscure parts.

Russell

Does anybody remember Arthur T Sallis in Brighton opposite the swimming baths in North Road. I used to visit it every time we went swimming. Rembember bying a 1154 Aircraft transmitter there, now worth a lot of money. Thaat was back in the early 50's

I used to visit his shop whenever I was in the vicinity. The last time I called, he was somewhat agitated - apparently he had a fairly large warehouse full of stock (someway from the shop) but Brighton Council were intending to compulsorily purchase it, bulldoze it and build a car-park on the site.  Wherever was he going to rehouse all that stock!  I remember that there was a shop across the road that sold all sorts, shapes and sizes of corks.  They had a cork lathe in the shop window but I never saw it in operation.

Another emporium that suffered a sad fate was in New Oxford Street, London. Apparently the proprietor died but the local council (Holborn? ) withheld permission for lorries to park outside the premises so that the stock could be removed! I never did hear how that situation was resolved.

Best regards,

Swarf, Mostly!

Edited By Swarf, Mostly! on 11/09/2019 16:23:56

Edited By Swarf, Mostly! on 11/09/2019 16:25:27

I stumbled upon a shop in Worthing, about 25 years ago and bought a couple of dozen potentiometers in the 10k and below range, probably for controlling computer cooling fans. They had all sorts of obscure electronic stuff. They also had some target rifle parts, I bought a handstop to fit in a fore end rail, it is still on my Gamo 126.

When I was a kid, my uncle gave me a gunsight from a 25 pounder which he bought in the lanes in Brighton, probably all antique shops and coffee bars now.

Edited By old mart on 12/09/2019 21:22:59

Rik---the shop near Weymouth Town Bridge was called "Moto Sales" next door was a good quality tool shop, actually on the bridge was "Pankhursts" motorbike dealer now a night club, times have sure changed, oh and "Thurmans" where you could buy 1 nail or four candles

Mick 🇫🇴

Close Mick, I'm pretty sure it was Moto Sails not sales.
Used to be shops everywhere, Even the used test equipment dealers have mostly disappeared or gone on line. Johns Radio and M& B radio in Yorkshire, are two examples. Property prices are a big driver I think. Why keep a business making a few tens of thousands a year when you can sell the property for a million or two and retire. That happened to two small car repair garages I used in Dorset Stewart of Reading that was Chiltmead (test equipment again) are still going but have moved out of Reading into what is basically a house in a small village.
It's not just in the UK. Most of the surplus places in "silicon valley" in the bay area of California have closed, A big one Halted Speciality Supplies closed last year. Helmut Singer in Aachen Germany also closed without notice recently. A big issue is that the "stock" can become hazardous waste "WEEE" and you have to pay to dispose of it if you cant sell it
Greenweld in Southampton (still going but new management selling mostly "new" surplus Chinese junk) had a huge batch of D size SAFT Lithium primary cells about 20 years ago for a fraction of the price of a standard D cell . They were just about to expire when they bought them. If expired SAFT could not sell them and would have had to pay for disposal.

My wife want's to know what is going to happen to all my junk when I die.......

Robert G8RPI.

I do remember the Government Surplus shop in Stockwell Street in Glasgow. When we did shopping trips to Argyll Street in Glasgow, my mother would often go to the china bazaar on Stockwell Street under the St. Enoch station arches and my father and I would go a few yards further down the street to visit the surplus shop. It was a treasure trove of bits for a young boy and my first transistors were bought there - red spot, green spot and yellow spot as far as I can remember. The transistors worked - soldered with a large copper bolt heated on the gas hob. There were also things like bomb sight computers with loads of small gears to play around with.

Jim.

Edited By Jim Guthrie on 13/09/2019 09:17:18

Anyone else remember JobStocks in Walthamstow? They had two stores: the original in Beulah Road and then another in St Mary's Road. At some point the Beulah Road location closed but I'm pretty sure the St Mary's store was still going for a while after I left the UK in 1968. (All replaced by housing now according to Google Maps).

Fascinating place .... genuine war-surplus. My favourite purchase was a WW2 bubble sextant. I was fascinated by that thing.

Doubt whether its still there but in december 2017 we visited Lincoln for the Christmas fair and down the bottom of the steep hill was a shop selling vintage plane meters, variable capacitors and lots of old spare parts aka tottenham court rd, cant remember the name .