I think this is where some of the stuff on eBay comes from. People order extra to get the price break and then recoup their money selling the extras online. PIC18F252-I/SP: piece price of $8.48 or 25 for $130.75 Selling 20 of them @ $7.00 on eBay nets $140 which covers the chip costs and shipping leaving 5 units at $0.00 for the buyer. And people that just want a few get a better price than going through DigiKey themselves. -------Original Message------- From: William Chops Westfield Sent: 06/24/03 05:39 PM To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU Subject: Re: [BUY]: Canadian supplies and programmers > > Prices are high however, it often costs $300 to get parts for a couple pieces of something (with spares, minimum quantity for cut tape etc.) that will sell for $100. each. I've noticed that digikey sometimes has a SIGNIFICANT price break between their "ones" price and the next tier upward (usually 25.) It's not always that their single-unit price is BAD, for a hobbyist source, it just looks like they're charging as much as they can get away with for providing that sort of service. Which is reasonably OK, IMO... Case in point is the PIC12f675, which drops from $2.08 to $1.29 when going from 1 to 25 units, and only to $1.25 at 100 units... BillW -- http://www.piclist.com#nomail Going offline? Don't AutoReply us! email listserv@mitvma.mit.edu with SET PICList DIGEST in the body > -- http://www.piclist.com hint: PICList Posts must start with ONE topic: [PIC]:,[SX]:,[AVR]: ->uP ONLY! [EE]:,[OT]: ->Other [BUY]:,[AD]: ->Ads