Just out of curiosity why is it that the one of the reasons for the USCF is to supply everything a player needs at members discounted prices, yet there are many other places that have better prices? Granted I have not seen if there are greater discounts for affiliates, yet, but unless they are much greater dicounts then it is actually more fiscally sound to shop elsewhere. I would think that the USCF with so many members would be able to do much better and still return a great profit if it was to offer substantially lower prices to members and retail to non-members. Just a thought.
I really don’t know why USCF charges so much for chess supplies. Go back to the late 80’s to even the mid 90’s, before the internet really came into its own, and I can see why the USCF charged so much, since it was near impossible to find a company that had decent prices for stuff. Even if it did have a better price, it might have been 10 or 15pct less.
Fast foward to 2008, and you can see by the sheer number of online companies that sell discount chess supplies, that the only reason to buy many of types of chess supplies from the USCF cataloge/store is more to help support the organization.
I’m not trying to say don’t buy from USCF store, but just looking around, you can’t help but notice that other online retailers have much better prices for a variety of products.
Here’s a perfect example of how competition benefits consumers: When I bought my first tournament kit around 1989, I spent $60 for a clock, $15 (or less) for some plastic chessmen and a vinyl chess board, and $50 for the small padded bag. For a grand total of about $125 plus something for S/H.
Fast forward to 2008: I just got a friend’s grandson a complete kit.
$68 including S/H: I got the Excaliber II digital chess clock, padded (small) chess bag, vinyl board, double weight plasic chess set and 2x scholastic game booklets. Not from USCF mind you. The entire set is almost identical to my first tournament kit. (cept my old clock was the quartz master obviously).
But like I said, I’m not trying imply that you shouldn’t use the USCF store, it has tons of stuff you might not find anyplace else, but shopping around certainly isn’t a bad idea either. Especially in these times when every penny counts.
In case anybody is wondering what my current tournament kit is: I still use the old blue bag I bought almost 20 years ago, but now I use the International Series (Rosewood) chess set, the Excaliber II digital chess clock and a leather chess board.
I’m really itching to buy a chronos clock though… 
USCF outsources to Hanon Russell (buying from uscfsales.com is not really buying from the USCF).
The USCF does get over $100,000 in revenue from USCF Sales. Losing it would make the budget even tighter.
I purchased several books about a year ago. I compared prices with another online retailer and decided to pay a higher price to buy from the USCF. However, unjustifiably high shipping charges were enough to push me to the other retailer. I was able to purchase another book for the difference in shipping. I agree that USCF’s contracted retailer would benefit by being more competitive.