apaeth@taurus.ece.cmu.edu (Alan Paeth) (03/19/91)
Can anyone tell me what became of this place? (John Meshna, Lynn MA) Better yet, anyone know where all that great surplus might now be stashed? (Power supplies, crts, computer part overruns, optics, etc.) By "great" let's say "periodically publishes a large, well-stocked catalog" -- like H&R does. /Alan "once lived just a block from C&H in Pasadena, why did I leave?" Paeth VE3AWP
w1gsl@athena.mit.edu (Steven L. Finberg) (03/20/91)
In article <1991Mar19.040529.2481@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> apaeth@taurus.ece.cmu.edu (Alan Paeth) writes: >Can anyone tell me what became of this place? (John Meshna, Lynn MA) > >Better yet, anyone know where all that great surplus might now be stashed? >(Power supplies, crts, computer part overruns, optics, etc.) By "great" let's >say "periodically publishes a large, well-stocked catalog" -- like H&R does. > > /Alan "once lived just a block from C&H in Pasadena, why did I leave?" Paeth > VE3AWP J. Meshna has gone to the great reward in the sky... :-( 3 or 4 years ago. His son ran the place for a couple of years, and finally sucommed to the Real Estate frenzy of about a year and a half ago and sold the property to the Coke Bottling plant next door. I think he got out just after the peak. I am not sure what happend to the inventory, I didn't see an auction even though I try to follow such things. A small correction Meshna was in eastern MA almost on the Atlantic in Lynn MA. About 5 miles north of Boston. Just off rt 129 = Western Ave. ****************************************************************************** Steve Finberg P.O. box 82 MIT Br w1gsl@athena.mit.edu Cambridge MA 01239
jeh@dcs.simpact.com (03/21/91)
> /Alan "once lived just a block from C&H in Pasadena, why did I leave?" Paeth > VE3AWP Ah, C&H Sales!!! Second only to Bernie's Surplus in the SoCalArea. Any place that sold me 9 perfectly good 16-bit parallel interface cards for HP1000-series machines for $5 apiece is ok in my book. (Naturally, I turned around and sold them for a hefty profit.) They have, or had, a resident cat, too -- definitely a good sign. --- Jamie Hanrahan, Simpact Associates, San Diego CA Internet: jeh@dcs.simpact.com, or if that fails, jeh@crash.cts.com Uucp: ...{crash,scubed,decwrl}!simpact!jeh
holbrook@Alliant.COM (Mark Holbrook) (03/22/91)
Meshna's was one of those catalogs I used to pour over as a kid and budding junker living in Chicago. About five years ago, a junker friend and I, now living in Massachusetts, decided to track down this Mecca of surplus. We played hooky from work for a day and drove down to Lynn to find it. We drove right past it a couple of times because there was no sign, just a very dilapidated warehouse. Went in through a side door and saw piles of dusty junk and boxes of random parts arranged in practically no order. Poked around a bit and started talking to one of the two people there, who turned out to be Mrs. Meshna, John's wife, who was running the business at that time. It turned out that old John had died the year before and Mrs. Meshna (have forgotten her first name) was interested in selling the business. Well! Didn't that just get out little junker entreprenurial hearts racing! We expressed serious interest and she then let us go into the much larger rear portion of the warehouse to assess the stock. It was everything you would imagine it to be. Really tall wooden shelves with narrow little aisles between them oozing with surplus, covered with dust. More junk just stacked up on the floor making some aisles difficult to get through. Dim, dim dangling bare-bulb lighting. And.. holes in the roof with rain dripping in on some of the stock. After exploring for a couple of hours, we got depressed. There was very little there that we felt had any market value except as scrap. There were many more parts than equipment and few of those would be of interest to anyone other than collectors, a rather narrow market in my mind. They had apparently not been real active in acquiring newer and/or more marketable surplus in the past several years. The main assets of the business were the three not-so-great warehouses on three plots of land in Lynn (and their mailing list), but as our interest was in the junker aspect and we knew squat about commercial real estate, we politely informed her we weren't interested and left. We did talk about doing the deal for weeks after that, even going so far as to explore some financing opportunities and a bit about commercial real estate, but although my cohort and I probably could have switched careers from hardware designers to surplus kings extraordinaire and been quite happy, we chickened out. The attraction of steady pay-checks does that to you sometimes. Ah, well. Mark Holbrook Alliant Computer Systems Corporation Phone: (508) 486-1262 1 Monarch Drive E-mail: holbrook@alliant.COM Littleton, MA 01460 USA UUCP: mit-eddie!alliant.com!holbrook
hoffman@speedy.cs.pitt.edu (Bob Hoffman) (03/29/91)
I'm sorry to hear of Meshna's demise. I've bought a lot of stuff from
that guy over the years. In the summer of 1975, I was on vacation in
New England and stopped by some of the surplus houses including Poly
Paks, B & F Enterprises, and John Meshna. I had quite a nice chat with
John and before I left, he handed me a magazine from a stack on the
counter saying, "Here's a new magazine; see what you think of it."
It was BYTE #1.
---Bob.
--
Bob Hoffman, N3CVL {allegra, bellcore, idis, psuvax1}!pitt!hoffman
Pitt Computer Science hoffman@cs.pitt.edu FAX: +1 412 624 8854