Cheap source of parts for projects, electronic or otherwise

Last Updated on November 23, 2018 by Dave Farquhar

I went to Dollar Tree today and picked up some of the street lights for their Cobblestone Corners holiday village series. It’s a cheap way to get some parts for projects, electronic or otherwise.

Where else will you get a battery pack for two AAs–complete with two-position sliding on/off switch–some bits of wire (22 gauge?), and up to three grain of wheat bulbs for a buck? Now I admit, I bought them because the lights are sized about right for my Lionel train layout and the style invokes the turn-of-the-previous-century look that I like. I’ll be snipping the wires at the battery pack and wiring the streetlights in series to a transformer. The multitude of battery packs will go into my parts bin, and I’m sure I’ll be fishing those back out and using them for odd projects for years to come.

All of the mentioned parts have applications for electronics projects as well, and any one of those parts is likely to cost more at Radio Shack than the whole village accessory. So what if you don’t use all of the parts? Keep the leftover parts in used peanut cans. You’ll use theem someday, and you’ll be glad you had them on hand and didn’t have to run someplace to get them.

Dave Farquhar

David Farquhar is a computer security professional, entrepreneur, and author. He has written professionally about computers since 1991, so he was writing about retro computers when they were still new. He has been working in IT professionally since 1994 and has specialized in vulnerability management since 2013. He holds Security+ and CISSP certifications. Today he blogs five times a week, mostly about retro computers and retro gaming covering the time period from 1975 to 2000.