Something I have not seen mentioned in the large number of posts about
cheap wire is:
My wife and I go to garage sales and estate sales almost as a hobby.
Quality time and all that.
I have found that many of these kinds of sales have quantities of wire
in the garage part of the sale. "I'm going to check the kitchen, honey,
you go see if there's anything interesting in the garage."
I have found that in maybe 2 out of 3 of these situations the person
doing the selling realizes the value of wire these days.
But in the other 1 out of 3, I have found some total steals. Notably I
picked up 2000 feet of insulated #18 on 4x 500' spools for $5 a spool
once and 1000 feet of #10 house wire (THHN Stranded) for $15.
Most of the time they don't have thousands of feet of wire laying
around, but ... sometimes they do.
People get it into their head that it's crap they need to see go away,
and sometimes they are really happy to get a few bucks for what you
would pay $50 or $100 for at the wire store.
I also have one of those permanent eBay searches going for spools of #18
wire. Most of those sellers know what it's worth, but occasionally they
don't and for whatever reason it has stayed under the radar.
Truly, I have bought so much wire over the years that recently I
realized I now had more than I would ever use for the rest of my life,
so I should stop buying it. My heirs will sell it off for pennies on
the dollar I'm sure. Meanwhile 160 meter verticals are a great antenna.
And so it goes.
73 - Mark N5OT
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