You can still buy (new) YM2151's. What?

I was really puzzled when I saw this:


And it's not even just the YM2151 either; YM2612's (Genesis), YM2608's (PC98), YM3812's (SoundBlaster), and even YM2610's (Neo Geo) are all available. What I'm curious about is why are these still in production; I can't imagine many (if any) new devices use any of these, and while just about every arcade and every other pinball machine used these back when, I still don't see much of a demand for these as replacement parts given they probably never fail.

The date codes on the photos are saying 92 and 91. Might be unused old stock, or newly removed from old boards. Whatever else one might consider as brand new.

I should learn to pay more attention... There seem to be no shortage of these running around anyway.

None of those parts are in production, they're all pulls/recycled or NOS parts. Sometimes fakes are around too.

Be wary of the ones from China, they may be factory rejects, remarked clones or dead chips.