I tend to agree that in the spirit of the rules from previous years most items at Surplus Center or any of the other surplus dealers are probably not legal. I have purchased lots or stuff from Surplus Center over the years for my personal projects but the only thing I think we have ever purchased from them for use on our FIRST robot was #35 chain
master links. A couple of years ago I was ordering some other stuff from them for a personal project and ordered a bunch of their #35 master links (like 50 IIRC). At $.35 each they are about as cheap as I have ever seen anywhere. We are still have probably 30 left so we should be good for a few more years. The current stock is over 9000 so I would think they would legally count as a COTS part equally available to all teams.
This brings up a question: Since these are less than $1.00 and are technically a fastener for chain should they or should they not be included in the cost accounting?