There are several suppliers of a large range of top-quality industrial bearings, including Grade 25 loose balls, on ebay or ebay stores. Some have even posted references to enable you to do things there are few customers (eg. putting the right sized ceramic ball loaded bearing cartridge in a hub from the 60's)
Ebay? Yes, just as "google" searching has changed, if not diminished, the importance of a hierarchical and well-defined address books, catalog, and the yellow pages index, ebay has become a pretty valuable presence for large retail distributors. They don't even have to sell much there. Just put some of their inventory or a store as an announcement and advertising. Cheaper than national Donnely (Yellow Pages) listings, because that is where your customer will find you easily, the history of chat that fills the first pages of a google search for your products, nicely absent.
This may even become part of the ebay business model. Those postings here to inquire about good bike shops in a particular town or city? Once every one of them is found on ebay, just specify your geographic search, see what kind of stuff they sell, and all that announce their presence that way, as easy as listing a few fine products for sale and describing the rest of your real retail and service presence in the body of the listings.
Harry Travis apologizing for essaying, and for forgetting his last sign off Washington, DC USA
On Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 11:05 AM, Jan Heine <heine94@earthlink.net> wrote:
> At 12:45 AM -0500 11/23/08, Steve Birmingham wrote:
>
>> I've had no trouble finding them in my area. The industrial supplier I've
>> used
>> for years had most sizes in stock, although not by the 1000ct box.
>>
>> And another supplier I use has more sizes than I've seen, but they must be
>> used somewhere.
>> http://www1.mscdirect.com/
>>
>>
> Loose balls are available here, too, but not in Grade 25. I can get Grade
> 200 with no problems. Even McMaster-Carr doesn't carry Grade 25 any longer.
>
> The web site you list above is down today, but if they have Grade 25 in
> large quantities at reasonable prices, they have a new customer!
>
>
> Jan Heine
> Editor
> Bicycle Quarterly
> 140 Lakeside Ave #C
> Seattle WA 98122
> http://www.bikequarterly.com