Check out how my ICs came!

[amyk]

A certain major distributor sent me this trimmer the other day

Reminds me of this.

[jaxbird]

A certain major distributor sent me this trimmer the other day

Reminds me of this.

That is just an engineer courting his/her sweetheart

We value precision components much higher than simple gold and diamonds. If you are gifted a precision resistor or capacitor in a nice box, do pay attention

[SeanB]

A certain major distributor sent me this trimmer the other day

Someone gave me one Luminary LM3S chips (it could be 811 or 812) that he had received from Luminary, unsealed. It is in a full tray, and the chip was just in one corner of the tray, which is otherwise entirely empty.

I actually can understand that. As a manufacturer the trays are, to them, a no cost item, along with the packaging to send any amount from 1 tray to 100. Samples in an individual tray will be easier using the existing packaging material and a whole tray than stocking a box and packaging that will handle part trays. They just break a single tray into 100 or so empties and mark them as samples and box them, so that samples can be easily sent out by taking the completed single item box ( kept in a separate area probably to avoid confusion) and simply pasting the address label on it, then dropping into the outgoing post or courier stream.

[LukeW]

A certain major distributor sent me this trimmer the other day

Ehm, I have got a single 0805 resistor shipped like that once. But it is in anti-static foam!

lol, you ordered a single 0805 resistor? Was it an expensive ultra-precision one or something?

[c4757p]

lol, you ordered a single 0805 resistor? Was it an expensive ultra-precision one or something?

I've done that. It was a relatively expensive resistor, just over $1 IIRC, for use in a repaired voltage standard - not hugely expensive (certainly much less than the main reference resistor, a custom-ordered 68.9k TX2575), but the total order price was already climbing quite a bit and I had absolutely no use for a bunch of low-tempco 1.4k resistors lying about.

[rob77]

let me share my very recent experience with delivering sensitive ICs...  big thumbs up for TME 

it's just 1 piece of cortex M3 (quad flat) in each bag (cheap ones, 5-6Euro each), and yet each bag was sealed with silica inside and the sealing date is documented on a sticker.

that's how it should be not like the FPGAs above in this thread.

(my name and customer ID censored )

[FJV]

A certain major distributor sent me this trimmer the other day

There is a reason for large over sized packaging.

Small items are regularly sent in over sized packages to prevent them being lost due to their small size.
For instance the package slips behind a wheel well of a delivery van and is overlooked.

So the larger packaging is preferred over the possible hassle the loss of a package creates.
For instance when a delay of the part arriving is more expensive than the extra packaging.