Since #electronics have been on my mind lately, I've been thinking of this ... story? situation? anecdote might be the best fit.
Doing anything every vaguely #niche, like #hobby electronics, in a small #city in the middle of #nowhere used to be quite difficult in terms of obtaining #supplies and #parts. Before the #internet, if you could plan ahead and order enough stuff at once from a big #distributor to make the #shipping charges worthwhile, #catalogs from DigiKey etc were life savers.
It didn't matter what you needed, they didn't have it in stock. It would take two weeks to order it in.
And it didn't matter how small it was, it was going to #cost ten bucks. I think that may have been a #minimum price for anything not in-stock, but I don't recall for sure.
A replacement reservoir cap for that radio? Two weeks, ten bucks.
A ceramic fuse of a particular value? Two weeks, ten bucks.
A transistor for your project? Two weeks, ten bucks.
Keep in mind that #minimum#wage at the time was less than five bucks an hour. And of course as poor students, all the jobs we could work were minimum wage. It would be like trying to build your project today with transistors that cost $30. Each.