RESISTOR STORAGEThanks everybody for your replies, much appreciated !
That helped a lot.
I think I will stick them in ziplock bags and print nice labels on them like BU did.
Have ordered the bags a minute ago, was very affordable, only 5 Euros for 100 of them in the size Cerebus advised, 60x80mm, with free shipping and... miracle it does not come from China but from good old France !
So I will get them in 3 days not 3 months !
https://www.ebay.fr/itm/313614869927Now need to order labels of the proper dimensions for my laser printer.
As for the bags, I think I will go with an open box rather than small drawers, for I have big hands and big fingers. It's more comfortable and faster for me to flick through the bags in a box, like you would with music discs in a music store.. than trying to grab tightly packed bags in a tiny drawer. Will try anyway, to double-check, but I anticipate a box (or large drawer like Mansaxel said), will be more practical in my case.. pun half intended, forgive me it's 4AM here
Like Cerebus idea too, little cardboard dividers to materialize the switch from one decade to the next, will make the search even faster.
I think I like that... can't wait to receive the bags and start printing all those labels !
@BU : you said 100 of each, metal oxide... that must cost an absolute fortune... do the Chinese make affordable resistor kits ?? Links/suppliers ?? Or are you just very wealthy ? Or you stole all of that from work !
.. or has the price of metal resistors dropped a lot since I last looked at it 30 years ago when I bought my resistors ?!
@Neomy : I am no design engineer but from all the TE (mostly Tek scopes...) and consumer electronics I ever worked on, 5% / E24 has always been the default (looking at the boards physically, and looking at the parts list which makes it clear...).... they use precision resistors only when absolutely strictly necessary, for obvious reasons of cost I would imagine.
And even within the E24 series, they use as few different values as possible, to optimize the BOM. Like, don't be a dick and specify a 910R or 1.1k resistor.. if a 1k would work just as well in the real world !
Granted, I have only worked on old stuff, up to the late '90s.... I don't know what modern gear, professional or consumer, is like these days... but I would still guess that the same principles of cost and BOM optimizations would apply today ?
For repair work or for my very light and humble design work as a hobbyist, E24 is good enough. If a repair needs a precision resistor I can as BU said cobble one together with a combination of a couple E24 resistors... and if I really care, I can always buy that one precision resistor later to make a nice tidy repair. Same for design work... cobble something together at the early prototype stage until you can get a proof of concept working... then you can buy the nice new precision (or power) resistor that's perfect.
Unless (like you it seems ?) you make heavy, heavy, constant use of precision resistors in every design or repair that you work on.... then paying a mega fortune to stock on every E48 or 96 value just does not make financial sense to me ? Don't mean to start a whole discussion or argument about this, merely meant to throw my view on it and run away !
At least for me, all I can afford and justify is stocking on the E24, maybe 1% metal like BU, if prices really have come down in 30 years, but unlike BU I certainly won't be able to afford 100 of each, I think !
Maybe x50 of the "10" ones, and x20 of the E12 and x10 of the remaining values, say. It's really a cost issue here... pragmatism
Again if one can buy complete kits for an affordable price from somewhere, please share your sources !
Otherwise it's gonna be Farnell, so depending on their pricing, quantities ordered will follow consequently.