On 2010-11-21, Bruce wrote:
On Sat, 20 Nov 2010 14:44:43 -0800, Tim Wescott
What do you want to bet that at some time in the past some enterprising
businessman got the bright idea of buying surplus ammo and selling it
back to the government as new?

I may be 100% civilian, but one of the points that I've learned from
histories is that it's hard to win a war with munitions that don't work
when you need them.

You may be joking but it does happen. I remember being a surplus
electronic place in L.A. and hearing the owner tell another chap how
he had bought a load of a some sort of electronic component from a
military salvage yard and later responding to a bid off to supply for
exactly the same item. Said he made 100% profit :-)
Cheers,

This happened to yours truly.

I bought perfectly new cylinder heads for Onan DJC generators (two
heads, one covers two cylinders, and the four cylinder DJC needs two
of such heads, so it was a set) from the military for $100.

I was lucky because I knew what the "heads" were, and they obviously
were not properly described, as usual.

Next week I put them on eBay and sold for $900 to a respectable
generator repair company.

I asked the buyer, just curious why did you buy them, and he said, he
was going to sell them to the military as they had an outstanding
order to fix a broken generator that was on some military base. I am
sure that his profit was far greater than mine.

i