Rare sighting of RPi4 in the wild!

Today I walked into my local Microcenter and they had 17 Raspberry Pi 4B, 8GB ram in stock for $74.99. Bought one; feel like I won the lottery! You could only purchase in store - no ordering or reserving for pickup over the internet. Hopefully, this signals an opening up of the RPi supply.

Hopefully your right. I keep checking every day at adafruit and still out of stock. That said, nice find! Wish we had a micro center (or something like it) in our state.

In the UK we used to have a wonderful electronic shop called Maplins. You could buy just about everything there. But it went bankrupt years ago.

All those places folded when through-hole ICs went obsolete. RS Components/Radionics also went, as with all the local tv suppliers.Only Farnell was hanging on when I was shopping last (2013/2014).

In the UK there are now Raspberry Pi shops around in some cities. They're not necessarily permanent but while they are around they are well stocked.

As for components, yes, the days of through hole components is long over. However, it is now feasible to work out a PCB with components and all via KiCAD and then send the plans off to Taiwan for small run manufacturing. Maybe there are still other places too. In some ways, that is slower, but it's workable if known in advance and compensated for. Some plants advertise a turn around time of less than two-weeks.

Many PCB manufacturers offered a prototyping facility... I wonder if they still do.

Well it happened again today. Checked my local MicroCenter website and saw they had 15 Raspberry Pi3 A+($24.99) and 25 Pi Zero W($9.99) in stock. Could only purchase in store. Bought one of each. MicroCenter is an authorized Raspberry Pi reseller and, as the above prices indicate, they are required to sell Raspberry Pi products at the prices set by the Raspberry Pi Foundation.
If you have a MicroCenter near you, it would be worth your while to check the website for your local store on a regular basis. They are starting to get some Pi products in stock but they are in store only purchases and the stock gets sold out pretty quick.