> I hopped in the car to get to the one nearest me and loaded up two shopping bags of electronics components, switches, banana jacks, oddball high-wattage resistors, etc.

The real bargains were the component cabinets themselves. Those big commercial chest of drawers retail for thousands of dollars. My co-worker bought the entire aisle of drawers after they were empty of components for I think a hundred bucks. Organized his entire basement shop into them.

I tried to get those too, but they were already marked as "sold" by the time I got there. :(