If you need a resistor, a capacitor, or a random transistor on a saturday afternoon, who you gonna call?
I am maybe lucky there is an extremely overpriced store 30 miles from me that has such things, but not everyone is so lucky.
One Sunday evening I carved a pencil into a resistor for something and some reason I now forget
I bought an assortment of resistors and capacitors a while back, and I have plenty of old power supplies and other scrap electronics to remove parts from.
And parts I’ve needed to order, are things that Radio Shack wouldn’t have had anyway, like low ESR capacitors and surface mount MOSFETs.