He's Dead, Jim.

[W7XF]

Radio Cell Phone Shack officially committed suicide today.

Chapter 11 filed, is selling 2000+ stores.

Life support terminated.

You're welcome.

No more asking questions and getting WTF looks.
The Obituary (http://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2015/02/05/radioshack-cuts-the-cord-after-90-years-files-for-bankruptcy/)

[NA4BH]

Great, now I can trash the gift card that I got for Christmas. Much like buying my own glass at a local craft brewery for $30.00 and have them go under two weeks later. Merry Fscking Christmas. Where's the Tylenol.

[K7SGJ]

Great, now I can trash the gift card that I got for Christmas. Much like buying my own glass at a local craft brewery for $30.00 and have them go under two weeks later. Merry Fscking Christmas. Where's the Tylenol.


RS sold beer? Whu Gnu?

[NA4BH]

I said craft brewery, not crap brewery. Proper syntax if you please, what ever that means.

[NA4BH]

Syntax = tax on beer

[KG4NEL]

11, eh? Wonder who they're thinking will come along and snatch it up...

[n6hcm]

it looks like they hope to keep some of the stores and sell some off. sprint and amazon have been named as potential suitors (amazon has been opening brick-and mortar presences of various sorts, usually pop-up spaces and mall kiosks ... they just opened a pick-up/drop-off point at purdue university).

were i to judge the existing locations in san francisco, the crap locations are *really* crap, and the good locations are *really* good. not sure how this will sort out.

[NM5TF]

have seen this coming for a while now....ever since they got rid of most components & concentrated on
selling cell phones....

only real bummer about this is that the local RS owner is a ham who managed to keep a small stock
of parts.....will have to use my Mouser account from now on I guess....

[N8YX]

Buy 'em if they got 'em.

Now will be a dandy time to pick up the odd spare part or tool they have in stock. I recall the "closeout tables" (on which many discontinued components were offered at what amounted to giveaway prices) being set up at various phases of the company's life cycle. Usually right before they did something monumentally stupid, like getting away from their core competencies and trying to be "....just like everyone else...". Ad infinitum.

Long live the DX series! Many prospective hams got into the hobby via receivers such as these:

13599

13600

[KJ3N]

13600

I think I have one of those around here, waiting for me to replace the lamps. Need to get that done before the next hamfest....

[kb2vxa]

I won't miss Cell Phone Shack one bit, what I've missed for years is a Radio Shack that sold radios, parts and tools to fix them with. Now you can't buy a new radio like that for love nor money, they have parts so small you need a magnifier to see and tweezers to handle. Just to make life interesting you have to buy a whole new shop to fix them if you can figure out what makes them tick besides a bug inside that died looking for a blood host it never found.

Yeah I EARNED my Island title and loving it, NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!

[K0RGR]

I feel sorry for the hams who worked at the local RS. They've both been pretty involved with the radio club around here.

[kb2vxa]

"I feel sorry for the hams who worked at the local RS."
I feel sorry for the RSs that had hams working there, the only ones where you had questions and they didn't have blank stares, they had answers.

[NM5TF]

Buy 'em if they got 'em.

Now will be a dandy time to pick up the odd spare part or tool they have in stock. I recall the "closeout tables" (on which many discontinued components were offered at what amounted to giveaway prices) being set up at various phases of the company's life cycle. Usually right before they did something monumentally stupid, like getting away from their core competencies and trying to be "....just like everyone else...". Ad infinitum.

Long live the DX series! Many prospective hams got into the hobby via receivers such as these:

13599

13600

I wish I had never sold my DX-160....had an amazing FET front-end that could really pull in weak sigs.....oh well...

I also wish I had my Austin Healey 3000 MKIII still....paid $3K for it in 1966.....now going for over $60-70K restored

[suddenseer]

I miss the tv tube tester, and the battery of the month club.

[w0aew]

http://l2.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/BTLB1.NzRVSYy4f752ThLQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9ZmlsbDtoPTM3NTtweW9mZj0wO3E9Nz U7dz01MDA-/http://media.zenfs.com/en_us/News/ucomics.com/stah150207.gif

[KG4CGC]

Popped into the one at the mall last night since it was supposed the be the one that would be open while they wind down.
Garbage.
Hundreds of 5 to 15 $ items selling for ... 5 to 15 $s. Boxes on the floor. Paper bits everywhere. Not even the vultures could have eked out a morsel.

[K7SGJ]

I miss the tv tube tester, and the battery of the month club.

Or, how about those lifetime guarantee tubes with the gold plated pins? Especially the TV sweep tubes that only lasted a few weeks, but they did keep replacing them. Oh the 6JE6, 6DQ7, 12AU7, 6BE6, and even the 6BK4 HV regulators I replaced with those things. Not all tubes were made in the series, but many of the more popular were. I think they were about 50% more expensive, and didn't last near as long as a national brand, but hey, in those days, any reason to have to go to a RS just to look around was okay.

[kb2vxa]

Oh yeah, I remember them well! Back in the daze before I understood antenna resonance I used a sweep tube as a final in... never mind. It ate them like candy and the Rat Shack down the street replaced them until the manager said "you're not using them as sweep tubes" and kicked me out of the store. No big deal, I had a metric ton of tested pulls from discarded chassis I scrounged behind the local TV shop and later when I learned and trimmed the antenna no more fried finals and as an extra benefit the RF got out of the back yard.

Speaking of the DX series SW receivers, someone gave me the first of the line, the DX-100 not to be confused with the Heathkit transmitter. It was the worst POS ever they just HAD to debug in later models. The RF amp popped from a nearby lightning strike, easy to replace, so I gave it to a ham friend's son just starting out. "Tornado" hooked it to a wire he ran along the fence and was happy with it for a newbie until something better came along.

[KG4CGC]

Oh yeah, I remember them well! Back in the daze before I understood antenna resonance I used a sweep tube as a final in... never mind. It ate them like candy and the Rat Shack down the street replaced them until the manager said "you're not using them as sweep tubes" and kicked me out of the store. No big deal, I had a metric ton of tested pulls from discarded chassis I scrounged behind the local TV shop and later when I learned and trimmed the antenna no more fried finals and as an extra benefit the RF got out of the back yard.

Speaking of the DX series SW receivers, someone gave me the first of the line, the DX-100 not to be confused with the Heathkit transmitter. It was the worst POS ever they just HAD to debug in later models. The RF amp popped from a nearby lightning strike, easy to replace, so I gave it to a ham friend's son just starting out. "Tornado" hooked it to a wire he ran along the fence and was happy with it for a newbie until something better came along.

You should have give it to a Mexican.

[VE7DCW]

Of course Radio Shack disappeared several years ago in Canada and the outfit that bought it out re-branded them as "The source" ...... they started a similar path as RS in the USA selling cell phones......inexpensive headphones and other mainstream consumer electronic crap that other retail outlets sold.......electronic parts for sale literally become non existent in the source stores ....... a sign of the times in the quest for profit! :dunno: