eBay ICs

Chuck D. Bones

Circuit Wizard
You know how I repeatedly warn people about the perils of buying semiconductors on eBay? Well, I chose to ignore my own advice and bought 20 CA3130s from a dealer in China. Out of 20, 19 tested good and the 20th one would probably have tested good if I hadn't plugged it into my test jig wrong. 😜

The CA3130s were 20 for $8.30 + $3.99 shipping. Works out to $0.62 ea. Not bad, compared to $2.00 ea at Tayda.
 
I bought some MN3207s and MN3102s from Aliexpress, 10 of each for about 10usd and the ones I've used seem to work fine. For 10 dollars I thought it was worth a gamble. They've definitely been desoldered from something, though.
 
The parts I bought were new.

Did Aliexpress inform you they were used parts?

Doesn't look like it. I can't confirm all of them work either yet, I'll give them all a go when I finish my Chepied.
 
I bought some THAT4301 and a few other bits from them (the eBay seller) in the spring. I haven't tested the 4301s yet.

Update: I didn't get out of there unscathed...

I picked up some
1S1588
2N3954
2N5459
LM308AH ( don't judge )
We'll be interested to know how they all turn out.
 
You know how I repeatedly warn people about the perils of buying semiconductors on eBay? Well, I chose to ignore my own advice and bought 20 CA3130s from a dealer in China. Out of 20, 19 tested good and the 20th one would probably have tested good if I hadn't plugged it into my test jig wrong. 😜

The CA3130s were 20 for $8.30 + $3.99 shipping. Works out to $0.62 ea. Not bad, compared to $2.00 ea at Tayda.
Hey, even a broken clock is right twice a day! Nice score :)

I recently got 2,900 Kingbright 3mm red LED’s (same as smallbear sells for $0.25 a piece) for $20 shipped. Just got them yesterday and they test 1.77v -two sealed bags of 1,000 and an open bag of 900+ Sometimes ebay works out great!
 
I know of all people Chuck knows how lucky he got on the CA3130s, but after browsing the seller's page and looking to see if they had an aliexpress store (there's a decent amount of ebay sellers that do and vice-versa, and I'll explain in the next sentence why I searched) I figure its worth mentioning that there's a handful of long threads on several different forums about counterfeit chips from that particular ebay seller and how buyers had negative reviews removed from the seller's page somehow.

The reason I looked to see if they had an aliexpress store is that ali is much better for reviews for both sellers and listed items than ebay by miles. It's still a gamble - some 5 star reviews will even mention that they haven't tested a given component - but I'm more confident taking that gamble when buying from aliexpress. Just my 2¢.
 
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