[Vintage Engr]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

I am very much of the hoarder-in-reverse 'if in doubt throw them out' school; I hate clutter and have [voluntarily] restricted myself to a limited storage-space!

Keeping dud valves seems deeply odd to me; would you keep broken mugs, worn-out tyres, or blown lamp-bulbs/fuses?

[Though my late mother used to put old lamp-bulbs back in the carton the replacement came in, then inevitably these dud-bulbs-in-a-new-box would find their way back into the cupboard-in-the-utility-room where new bulbs were kept, leading to much frustration/time-wasted-fault-finding when a bulb failed and a 'new' one failed to restore illumination. I also worked briefly with a guy who would take a replacement fuse/panel-bulb fron our spares, and put the failed one back in the packet with the new ones; when we discovered what he had been doing I got the entire spares-holding written-off and reprovisioned; the offender left our employment at the same time].

In my youth I used to salvage the octal bases from valves, but having accrued a collection of a few dozen and never having used one, they went to the skip during one of my student-era house moves.

These days I 'crack' failed fuses, and snip a few pins off dud valves to make sure they don't [either inadvertently or through deception] re-enter the supply-chain. In times-past I would 'pop' valves to destroy the vacuum but in recent times, having become aware of the potential risks of some of the materials inside, I just snip a few pins off and they go to WEEE along with failed lightbulbs (whether LED or CFL).

Quite a lot of the supposed "NOS" boxed valves I see advertised are, I suspect, 'pulls' from equipment where a technician has put the failed valve back in the carton the replacement came in, and these have found their way back into the supply-chain.

Indeed, I recently purchased a PCL85/05 that was supposedly NOS. It wasn't; it was definitely a pull, which had been returned to a new carton!

David.