I thought porn is banned in youtube...

Whether he has OCD or not, it's a clear example of the *great scale* of what you can do with your time, when you're not otherwise watching TV, commuting somewhere, or looking up cat pictures online. The scale of it is truly great.

BUY IT DAVE!!! BUY IT ALL AND PUT IT IN THE BASEMENT!!!

Is every Australian electronics engineer named David? :P

Forget about home labs, this is better than the vast majority of company/university stockrooms I've seen.

Ah... lots of goodies from the days when stuff was designed to be fixed. Brings a tear to my eye. What a shame that there aren't more people recycling old parts like this and donating them to makerspaces where young kids can use them to learn about the basics of electronics. A through-hole resistor works just the same as an 0805 SMD variety and is a lot easier to wire into a breadboard ;-)

up until the 8 minute mark I had assumed this guy had died until you mentioned him going overseas. haha

What's really amazing is I didn't see any dust anywhere, even on all the old tube boxes ! He must have had constant cleaning and clean room level air filters ! I worked in a clean room making CRTs and there was way more dust than this guy ! How on Earth did this guy keep it this clean ? Especially with all the cardboard putting off dust !

Radio Shack went bankrupt because this guy bought them out!

This is a familiar scenario to me. I'm a member of a vintage radio club here in the UK, to raise funds to run the club they hold auctions 4 or 5 times a year. As the member ship is mostly older people, 60 years +, bereavement clear outs are frequent. Unfortunately much of it goes for very low prices and I find it very sad that cherished and life long collections are dispersed in such an unrecognised way. I know an old guy fairly locally who has a workshop very like the one in this video, amongst other things, he has 30,000 valves, mostly NOS!! 300 oscilloscopes, a huge range of test gear, and many, many valve radios. All arranged and organised in a very ordered manner. When he goes it will most likely be dispersed to the winds, very few people have the resources to accommodate such a massive collection. I find that the average electronics type conforms to typical characteristics, and I include myself in this. Very often, but not always, single, an inclination to solitary pursuits, of few, very considered words, content with their own company, fastidious, generous, trustworthy, loyal, honourable, collecting inclinations, diverse interests, select group of friends and always willing to help. We can be a strange lot!

OCD Paradise lol. Wonderful collection. Just to add in my 2 cents. I haven't seen a modern electronics shop with that much gear, that well sorted.

the dream of every Electronics engineer with ocd. so organized

He was a pretty big deal in electronic repairs. I asked a few amateurs and they knew him as the parts maniac.

Hey there, I have seen old electronics stored like this in a warehouse at the old McCoy air force base in Orlando Florida...The air force closed the base in 1973 and the warehouse was locked up for 15 + years.. One of the guys that worked for the FAA said this was left behind when they closed the base for spare parts... I walked in the building and it was filled all the way to the ceiling with boxes and boxes of tubes, transistors and every piece of electronic equipment you could think of...WOW... NEVER seen anything like this in my life time... He said to me, if there is anything you need get it out of here now before they clean it out... Two days later I went back to get what I could out of there and found all was gone... I stood at the door with my jaw on the floor... I was just blown away and found out they hauled all of the electronics to the dump.. That made me sick for over a week and now it still make me sick just thinking about it... sometimes life sucks

you need to find the guy and interview him

Unbelievable, I like how organized and clean the place was, thanks for filming it, if you ever get a chance to meet him you should sit him down for an interview i would love to know the back story.

Mercury thing will be relay/switch, not a rectifier.

IMHO, this is pretty sad. An amazing life-long collection that nobody really needs.

I cannot even watch the whole video it literally brings a tear to my eye

this is a man's lifeblood... decades and decades worth of loving curation and obsessive organization. Brings a tear to my eye

Dave we need an update on this guy, it what we deserve LoL, perhaps a family member can give you a short interview on his life :) I would love to know more about the fella.

The "company" you have never heard of is "Kabelmesstevhnik" which is german and translates to "cable messurement technology/technique"

Breathe, Dave, breathe! What a great collection! Thanks for showing us this!

Those items deserve to be in a school or university. They would be great for teaching porpouses!. Hope they found their way to that kind of institutions!

I can't think of a better person winning this auction..keep on teachin' Dave!

You've got to find this guy and try to get an interview with him! This is mind blowing!! Please Dave!!

Jaw dropping organization skills. I know how hard is to order stuff in a way that is consistent, that takes so much time and mental effort! Huge respect to this guy..

Absolutely amazing collection, Dave! Thanks for sharing.

Looking in the comments I have a feeling that people are missing a very important aspect about David Sparks here. Knowing nothing as I know of this guy I could only guess that this guy was or is a very lonely person. Dedicating all those thousands of hours to dessolder, catalog and organize all those parts means that he was alone while doing that. I love electronics and sometimes I feel that I am swapping the interaction whith other human beings by doing and studying electronics. Somehow this video opened my eyes. It must be sad to end up your life and everything that you loved so much being auctioned or throwned away while no one can remenber your name or who you was. Just a thought.

If all those parts are desoldered and salvaged, this goes beyond just a hobby, into the realm of obsessive compulsion.

amazing collection and having all of them accounted... wow so wow! BUY IT ALL DAVE!

That's an incredible collection, I wish I was nearly as well organized.

it looks like the phillips/mullard archive, there they have examples of all the mullard and phillips inventory. funny side note bbc radio4 long wave is currently using its last 2 tubes, its supposed to have no replacements left, and will go off air if one goes down. but i have seen at least 9 examples in the archives.

I'm lucky if I can find a 1K resistor, I throw components everywhere lol.

This video brought tears to my eyes

drooling at all those big can caps!

I wonder who the guy was that owned all this stuff. I thought he had died until you said he was going over seas?

I have just got my wife to see the video after complaining endlessly about my stuff. Maybe now she will have second thoughts........I doubt it somehow?

you're my own lab going here recently but nothing like that that is just freaking amazing

Thanks for your posts man. I downloaded at least 40 videos of yours for reference.

Flabbergasted by this video because organisational and commitment porn always impresses me. This is essentially akin to finding a rare Ferrari in a shed. v pleased you captured this Dave because it deserves credit and you've now got people all over the world thinking #wow...... any chance of giving us a brief synopsis of who this guy was ? i love a back story ;)

Hires professional liquidation company to sell tens of thousands of dollars worth of meticulously sorted electronics components, gets about four hundred bucks...

Dude, that is INSANE. What a find!

Congrats man! wicked score

It would be criminal to take away years of effort away for just $405. Even if he demanded that much, you should do the right thing and pay him something reasonable.

Can you interview the owner?!

thx for sharing that, it's cool that they let you go in there and look around. Reminds me sorta of the old school surplus place I used to go to, but it was pretty messy but they had all kinds of strange stuff. for those who lived in california it was C&H surplus. they had all kinds of parts and electronic equipment.

WOW WOW WOW, I'd sure love to inherit that parts stash! That's beyond AWESOME! Every ham radio tinkerer dream! Absolutely amazing!

$405 for the lot? That's insane. The "professional e-bayer seller" was NOT doing their job.

Are everyone in Aussie named Dave/David?

Damn. That is crazy how many parts are there. Almost like private electronics parts store and an impressive electronics lab. Thanks for sharing.

JACKPOT! Cricky mate you scored a massive haul! And it's sorted like a store!

this guy must be borderline crazy. Ridiculously, meticulously organized...categorized...packaged...geeez. But I would KILL for a collection like that at work.

somebody should make a documentary about this guy

OMG!! That's all I can say. So much time went into the sorting. Amazing. :)

It's amazing how much time, effort and money has gone into all of that. I could only dream of owning that many parts and having the space for it.

This is insane. And awesome. And insane. WTF Only 405$ for all this?! For real?! Just te boxes, bags and container worth more then that! Crazy

i saw a pair of NOS Mullard EL34 going for $1000 the other day, the valves in the white boxes aren't necessarily generic' they have probably been supplied to the military.

Thanks for uploading this. I showed it to my GF, and she had to admit that I am sane after all.

Thank you Dave for sharing this. I'm gonna go insane now.

You need to do an interview with the owner!

are those curtains still for sale?

Holy cow! That's paradise for someone like me who likes vintage electronics!

Man that's awesome! Wish I could come across a find like that.

Dave, it would have been great if you'd met and interviewed this guy while he was still alive! (I'm assuming he passed away). Did you find out who he was and what he did?

mr "sparks" sounds like you found a supervillains secret lair.

Well done on the find. Wow!

This reminds me of a home I visited where the owner had a schedule for cleaning, raking and manicuring the gravel in the crawlspace.

Kinda makes me sad that this guy didn't have anyone to pass this down to or that they couldn't appreciated it. This is a guys life's work so to speak just to be it's getting separated after how much time and energy he spent collecting an organizing.

RIP David Sparks, a hero to all geeks and hoarders!

A incredibly neat and organized hoarder of antique electronics and components.

Looks like you hit the jackpot Dave!

A year or two back I went to a deceased estate sale of an ex NOAA chap. Most amazing machine shop, electrical and chemical lab I have ever seen. I wanted to buy everything! A little ghoulish to be picking over the bones of a chap's life like that, but just amazing how much awesome stuff he had accumulated. That said I imagine when I die someone will be licking their lips over my crap too. Maybe that is the way of things, perhaps I'll encourage someone new into a life of pointless hoarding too. Perhaps instead I should give it away while I am still alive, and while thru-hole stuff is still remotely useful.

If it was not sold already it should have been donated to a collage or something

to a ham op that selection of parts would be a dream! Many of us hams still search for and desire leaded components and many like to build and tinker with the projects published in the ham radio journals over the years

Dave you have got to buy ALL of it!

Is this where someone crosses over from being a collector to a hoarder?

grab all those tubes!!!

Beautiful system he had there.

I spent an entire summer desoldering PCBs for through-hole parts. Sorted and bagged it filled two 20 gallon tubs. This must've taken a few lifetimes to collect! Utterly amazing!

Most likely scenario in my opinion is that he owned a repair shop, as many did in the old days. After retirement, he just moved some stuff in his home and kept repairing old gears as a side job until he died.

Its common for some reason when men get old they hoard and sort items like this as if they are going to need them in the afterlife.

Dave. I had a past friend who had an awesome collection of parts. His name was Wolfgang Slabicki. He had invented some circuit's and had one or two published in silicon chip. His main interest was in CB AM USB LSB UHF. I will always remember his shed. He would always be making something from a air can crusher to a trailer checker. I'M rambling on a bit. But i think your segments help me to understand the importance of knowledge of parts and why things are done a certain way in a circuit. All the best from michael fogarty from Hazelwood North Victoria.

Just absolutely fantastic! Even if I love to collect, sort and organize components into bags and take away boxes, that is nothing compared to what this guy did. My guesses are he must have started to build up the workshop somewhere around 1950 and then just went on and on. With one thing in mind, "I shall keep this organized and not let it get out of hand". or He very well could have had many other workshops sent things to him and as soon as he got one little or big collection he just did what he had to do. Okay lots of words here :D but yeah this is without a doubt one of the most massive things I ever seen! Blessed!

OMG If those tubes are NOS they can go as $100k. Nice found for only 30 bucks

Why didn't You buy it, Dave?

That really is a mind blow! And I thought I was organized. Think again. WOW!!

Crazy had to share this to a couple of people.

Unfortunately modern surface mount electronics takes the fun out of scavaging components from old circuit boards... Due to SMT... Electronics is a dying hobby.

I wold have sold my car for the racks of tubes alone!

This blew my mind. David Sparks. LOL. Great video!

mindblown ... thanks for it, i hope it will find a good new home.

Who would ever think all those components would be inside a residential home. Looks more like the inventory of a business. I would have bought everything and unloaded it on Ebay. If he desoldered everything shown in this video, the poor guy probably lost his mind from all the lead fumes and ended up in some mental institution. LOL

He seems to be a very tidy hoarder who ate a lot of coleslaw and knew a drug dealer for the bags lol :)

My fav EEevblog

i am about 1 /10 of 5 percent, but more into low voltage, and smd,smt parts, wonderful clip David. fun to view, much thanks, from Thomas in Vancouver Canada .

Looks like the guy had a serious OCD.

where the fuc is he now? did he slipped away on the time machine he build w these :D ??

That is completely frikkin' epic!

lovely !! only electronic hobbyists and enthusiasts will know the beauty of this stuff !!