Where do NOS tubes come from?

[KGWagner]

I see the term "NOS" bandied about on this forum quite a bit, and often in ways that imply that there may be some misunderstanding of what that acronym means.

It's not a brand name, trademark, or quality rating. "NOS" stands for New Old Stock. What that means is the part is old. It's been in stock for some time but has never been used, so is still considered "new".

"Old" is a relative term. A loaf of bread that's been on a store shelf for 5 days is old. A tube that's been sitting on a warehouse shelf for 6 months or a year is not.

There seems to be a longing for tubes built back in the days when they built a lot of tubes because the tools they used to manufacture them were newer and more accurate, materials were more consistent, the factory people knew more about what they were doing, quality control was better, and so on.

But, those days are long gone. To truly get a NOS tube today, it would have to have been sitting on a shelf somewhere for roughly 40 years. Does anybody think there are secret stashes of tubes somebody squirreled away 40 years ago, banking on the idea that someday everybody would be sorry they invented transistors and the value of his stash would skyrocket like a vault full of Rembrandt paintings? And even if someone were that prescient, how big a stash do you suppose he had? They've been selling NOS tubes for years now. Where are they coming from? Did somebody invent a time machine?

Any thoughts? I have an inquiring mind, and I wanna know <grin>