I just ran across this old image that was used to make a poster for the first VCF that I had an exhibit at. Based on the date on the files, it looks like the poster was designed in 2008.

The main thing that struck me is that I can’t believe what I was thinking, selling those kits for only $349! You can’t imagine how much effort it took to gather together all the parts and then assemble kits. Eventually I gave up on the kit idea and just sold bare boards. All told, I think I sold something like 16 boards and kits and kept a couple of boards for myself. I made a little money on the project, but if you counted up the hours and calculated an hourly pay rate, it had to be way below than minimum wage.

You don’t find many electronics kits manufacturers these days. I think the main reason is that it is now actually cheaper to build an electronic item than package a kit.

I am sometimes surprised at how little money that some people ask for bare reproduction PCBs. Sometimes, I see people asking less money than what I paid for those PCBs. I suppose if you really dig around, you may be able to find a fab house in Asia that will make a PCB for almost nothing, but my investigations always showed that for larger PCBs and small runs, the most popular offshore fab houses, really weren’t that much cheaper than domestic ones. Thus, I always have my PCBs made here in the USA.