Are those grab bags of old brand new parts worth buying?

Hey
In your opinion, is it worth to buy the RANDOM GRAB BAG of 0.5kg brand new but old parts, including:
- resistors
- capacitors (electrolytic, ceramic, foil)
- diodes
- inductors
- etc
for 3$?
They say that 0.5kg = around 1000 parts.

This is the photo:

I am considering buying such bags for 30$ or more. They are told to be from the remains of rtv manufacturing line.

I am 100% hobbyist electronic.

Is it in your opinion worth the investment?

If you plan to store all these components by sorting on well-identified organizers, it might be a good idea. Myself, I have my own stock of electronic components almost empty, but I do not know if I would pay $30 for all that bags, which perhaps have the same parts repeated.

Depends on your "care-abouts".

I get paid way too much for engineering, to spend
hours sorting a pound of random parts no matter how
cheap.

Then there's the question of just how good (even if
"new", which may or may not be true) the parts are
and what is the consequence if you solder in a bad
one that you believed was good. Then chase it, find
it, rework it and hope nothing else got hurt (like, do
you -really- want to put in a junk 5V regulator and
roast everything on the board that hung off its output?).

Now in my broke-a$$ youth I surely did buy stuff out
of the Poly-Paks fliers when something in the bundle
was needed and I was unpaid and had nothing but
leisure time.

But most of the time what you want is cheap and
buying -only- what you want, guaranteed*good
and nothing but, is a better idea.

If you want junk, strip electronics boards for it.
There's a nonzero chance that this is where some
of the bag comes from anyway.

*guarantee? On electronic parts? Surely I jest.
Unless you want to go through the RMA process
which might fly with a direct or distribution sale,
but tell the OEM that you bought it by the pound
outside channels and enjoy the laughter....

If you do not have a good stock of components for experimenting I would say yes, buy one but until you have some idea of the contents I wouldn't buy more. The components are probably good but the range of values might be very limiting, it depends on what production line stopped to make the parts available. You could for example get 0.5Kg of unmarked or house coded ICs and never know what any of them are.

On the other hand, I once got an unmarked crate and found it contained over 100,000 ICs, mostly EPROMS, EEPROMS and other memories but all tubed and sealed in manufacturers anti-static bags. I kept a few of each type and sold the rest at a fat profit!

Brian.

Just bear in mind that if your making to sell and you have to obey ROHS then these parts may well be non lead free.