Drifted through most of these post, the main consensus is to go local local local, we'll that's a good thing to go local but I can't go local, everything that is open when I get home from work is 30 mi. away, so I do the next best thing, ebay or online somewhere.
Last month I was looking for a 12 mm 1.25 tap & die, spent 4 nights looking online, ebay had some good prices from China but the last time I ordered from China it took over 2 months to get the order, the US locations was I thought on the high side for ebay, same on amazon. So on Sat. I went to the nearest hardware store, they had the 12mm tap, $8.00, bought that and some other stuff, and after using up 3 hrs. by now, I didn't want to spend all day riding around the country side and risking getting the (I'm No. 1 hand gesture) went back home and did what I wanted to do on my Sat. off.
At night went back online net shopping again for the illusive 12mm die, went to a bunch of sites that are mentioned here, but this one unknown never heard of site came up>>>
Opentip.com: Online shopping for promotional items, sporting goods, office products, home and garden, and apparel. <<< what is a place like this doing selling taps&dies, for some reason they had a good selection at the best price by far, so after checking out this store making sure it was located in Timbuktu China, I ordered the die, got in 4 days, looks like good quality, better then the Harbor Freight set I have. The ordering was easy, shipping not hidden under 20 pages of bla bla bla somewhere.