Electronic Goldmine order review

Picked up my Goldmine order today, and I have to say, I'm eager to get inside. Let's have a look!


(note: a lot of photos, have yet to find any way of putting them side by side, review/conclusion is at the bottom of the page)

 As you can see, the higher shipping cost is almost justified by just the size, measures about 1' * 1' * 8.5", and weighs 5.4kg. From the looks of the processing email I got, it took approximately 8 days from confirmation, to ship and arrive.

 

1.876kg for the first super surprise box.

1.956kg for the second surprise box.

This must be the package containing my toroid assortment! 0.706kg

These are all the things I actually ordered, a majority of the size/weight was in the two surprise boxes.

Two heatshrink assortments, I assumed these would be larger but they are all 1" or larger, so that follows the details of the assortment on their site. Notice the discolouration of the white heatshrink on the edges.

The contents of the toroid assortment, can see some defects in the larger one which is most likely why it ended up at Goldmine to start with.

Package of fast diodes, though 6 aren't much use now that I've only got 2/6 of the MOSFET's I ordered...

Here's the relay assortment, I also assumed these would be larger, though these are fine for most uses. Some 5V and 24V relays in there.

Some of the relays have quite a few pins, so they're likely atleast double pole. Have yet to pin them out.

Resistor assortment, a lot of weird resistors with no colour bands.

High voltage film capacitor assortment. Range from 0.33 microfarad to 10 microfarad. Branded Aerovox.

Micro drill bit set, none appear to be broken. Of varying size and use.

Drill bits out of the box.

First super surprise box, top view.

Second super surprise box.

 Contents of the first.

Quite a dense amount of components.

Sorted out into their "categories". From left to right, top to bottom: Speakers, fuses, fasteners, control knob, muffin fan. (second row) Switches, headers, LED's, stepper motor, 3V power adapter for a handheld game device. (weird third row) 3.5mm stereo jacks, a single alligator clip, and a few little transformers. (fourth row) Capacitors, inductors, diodes, semiconductors, a little resistor in a anti static bag. (fifth row) Resistors, relays, photo interrupter, crystals, small stepper motors.

Here's my assorted pile, a few little single LED flashlights, some caps, resistors, little disc things. There are a few little three legged devices, which look a bit like laser diodes but don't appear to have any lens assemblies with them in there too.

Pile o' resistors. Few variable resistors, mainly weird little quarter watt sized resistors. The bigger (~1W) were in the 10-20K range.

A few relays, look useful for quite a few projects, no real high current ones though.

A variety of crystals. Some are 13.5KHz, there's also a 10KHz in there. Didn't record all of them.

Some semiconductors, there is a little 4A continuous rated SCR, a 4 bit counter SN74LS162AN, some little transistors and the such..

Some diodes, nothing too special here.

A lot of the inductors you'd likely find in power supplies, between the mains input and rectifiers. Those yellow ones all seem to have a single wire that isn't terminated, as well as the two pins on either side. Maybe something for radio? Also a heap of the little can ones marked with .221

Lots of polyester film caps, a few electrolytics, as well as some mylars.  Nothing too special here either.

Mainly a heap of tiny little push button switches, two larger rocker switches, and a few toggle switches. Nothing special.

A heap of 3.5mm stereo jacks. Might end up selling these on eBay, as I'm NEVER going to use that many. (also got a handful from the other box)

Some little transformers, don't believe these are anything special, although I did not inspect them.

Generic stepper motor.

A handful of green LED's, with a lens which makes them seem like they were purposed to stick through a case or enclosure. Also a few right angled orange LED's in mounts. Few larger LED's.

A handful of little headers, no mating pairs though.

Some little speakers.

A heap of fuses, pretty sure those boxes were all 2.5A, and those larger ones didn't have a current marking that I could see (only rated for 250V).

Some fasteners.

Little muffin fan.

Space filler! A little 3V, 350mA power adapter. Not very useful...

A lot of these little motors, they look like something I'd expect to find in hard drives.

Little 4 way splitter for TV/cable use. 7dB.

Second parts box

Contents.

Sorted, you can probably guess what's in each pile. As I don't have any other photos of it, the box to the left is the assembly for a cassette player, the mechanism to drive it.

Assorted pile, consisting of again a few little LED flash lights, another few laser looking things, a Molex to SATA power adapter. A clip on ferrite bead, some banana plugs, two little heatsinks, another two SATA cables, there's also a little Klixon in there, though I'm not sure what it's rated for.

Resistors! Yay, I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to ever categorise these.

Inductors... Same as last box.

A few different relays this time, again nothing of significant switching capacity.

A few little 9V battery clips.

It appears there was also a solar panel hiding in the box somewhere, I eventually figured out what all the pieces were after I sorted it all. The other reviews aren't kidding when they say they are thin!

A few more diodes this time, as well as a lone surface mount one.

Another few semiconductors, more transistors and stuff this time, there's also a little PIC in there, 12F683. I can see a project for that. The other 4 pin device is a PWM controller. Two surface mount transistors, as well as another 4 bit counter, SN74LS162AN.

Another heap of 3.5mm jacks... I don't see how they would even need this many in stock! Wow...

A few more caps, same as last box although there is a mains rated film cap there, and a larger electrolytic.

Another heap of switches. Few large rockers, mainly little pushbutton types.

They must also have a heap of crystals they want to get rid of, another heap here.

Few more LED's. Mainly green ones this time, and there is a single red 7 segment display there too.

Fasteners.

Headers.

Speakers and buzzers.

More fuses, yay...

More motors.

There were two of these knobs, one in each surprise box.

Done!

And that concludes this electronics goldmine order! I can't say I'm ever going to order any of the super surprise boxes again, as they brought my order up a few kg's, and brought the shipping cost to $96.20AUD. Although I guess they're as the title suggests, surprises. If you want some 3.5mm jacks, resistors, LED's or headers, I recommend you go right ahead! For anyone interested, the total order cost $45.34 minus shipping and handling.

The $50 minimum for international orders also sucks, although I guess it's got reason to be there, it takes a bit of effort to ship, pack and do the paperwork for these international orders. One last little thing I dislike is that the IRF640's I ordered were almost out of stock, 2 out of 6 left, and instead of mentioning it to me by email, it was simply put on the invoice as "HAVE 2 OF 6 ORDERED. WE ARE NOW PERMANENTLY SOLD OUT OF THIS ITEM", so I ended up with not as many MOSFET's as I had hoped, which is annoying as knowing my luck I'm likely to blow some up.

Their website notifications also don't seem to be very helpful (on par with other reviewers), as the order stays as "web order received" for the length of the order, and it's still like that now. So no tracking numbers or the like.

Overall, there were ups and downs, if you don't mind the not always special surprise boxes, not great notification system and heavy items go ahead! Their website is Electronic Goldmine.