Radio Shack vintage capacitor assortment kits #ShackToberFest

Bacvk in the 1970s and 80s, if you were doing a lot of electronics work, you’d consider getting a capacitor selection. And of course Radio Shack was the place to go, offering a dozen different values in a handy case, all for less than $10.

You can see I taped in a conversion chart for microfards to picofarads and a numeric code to value chart. I think those came with some Radio Shack documentation but really should have been printed on the card.

Back then, values were measured in microfarads and picofarads (this was after the disaster of earlier decades with folks using micromicrofarads instead of picofarads). So there was no nanofarads, millifarads or farads (a 5500uF cap was considered huge).

Of course if you wanted electrolytic capacitors, there was another kit for that, at another $9.95.

My cases are now cracked a bit. The original caps are mixed in some with some I got from elsewhere. But they are always on the shelf, ready for the next spark of inspiration.

Did you have these kits or others? Let us know in the comments and on social media hashtag #ShackToberFest.

 


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