If I preserve it in lucite, will that make you happy?

My Evil Nazi Granny[sup]TM[/sup] puts you all to shame. Years ago, her then-husband bought her a new stove. She made him install the old one in the attached garage, so she could cook out there to keep from getting the new stove dirty.

PS - She smells like mothballs. Anybody surprised?

Yeah. The finish on the guitar shows the woodgrain underneath, but imparts a black color. If I were at home, I’d take a quick pic with the digital and post a link. But trust me, it looks bad ass.

Let me get this straight, THespos - you got the new car in August, now have 3,000 miles on it. So you’ve had it through part of August, all of September, almost all of October? Definitely over two months? And this is somehow a big deal?

3,000 miles is a little on the high side of average, but no big deal. I used to go through at least 1,000 miles a month on my little Dodge Colt, and it’s still going strong. (Though, it’s an '87 model, so it’s more a “around town” car now.) I was always led to believe that 1,000 miles a month was “average”, so you’re only a bit higher than that right now. But I assume that some months, you’ll go slightly below “average”, and it’ll all even out. But even if you always put a few “extra” miles on your car - so what?

I have taken my little Dodge Colt everywhere - up to Yosemite from L.A. on the random “impulse” trip, all over everywhere. Because that’s what cars do - take you places. What is the POINT of having a car if you can’t just jump in in and drive?

A friend and I bought our cars the same week. I drive a lot, I thought, up to the mountains most every weekend and my then GF had a worse car so we always used mine for long trips. At the end of two years I’d put on 40K, a little high but not much beyond the average.

My friend had put on 100K (I still don’t know where he drove, his commute was the same as mine). But the thing was he bought the truck (Chevy S-10 Blazer) with a 5 year loan. I don’t know if the car would be worth having at the end of the loan, with 250K on it, the way he took care of it. It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, dead car and still 2 years of loan payments.

I will never forget laughing at the faces Beanie Baby collectors would make when a child opened up and took the tag off of their Happy Meal toys. They would exclaim, “Do you have any idea what that will be worth?” Tell me what is a McDonalds Beanie Baby sealed in packaging is worth today… Diddily squat.
Happy SDMB Anniversary to me…. Happy SDMB Anniversary to me….

Hehe reminds me of my My Family. I guess my Great-Great-Grandmother got a very nice set of silver silverwear. But she decided not to use it, instead saving it until her daughter(my great grandma) got married, and gave it to her as a wedding present. She again didn’t use it, saving it until her daughter got married, etc. etc. Now there is a very nice set of 200- year old silverwear that was just given to my sister when she got married. By now its so valuable that everybody is afraid to even open the box for fear of scratching something. So it just sits in a safe-deposit box, and probably will until the end of time cause no one will ever use it, and they sure as hell can’t sell it due to guilt. You women folk are just wierd.

Oh yeah, I know about this one.

I have three cars[sup]*[/sup]; a '97 Ford with about 70,000 miles on it, a '92 Olds with something like 97,000 miles, and a '66 Cadillac with 36,000 miles on the clock.

When the spirit moves I take the Cadillac out for a drive on a nice day or (gasp!) drive it to work just because it’s neat to feel like a badass crusing through traffic in a big black Cadillac. Every time, someone will say to me, “But you’re driving it! Put it away and you can sell it in a couple of years for a pile of money!”

Yes, I’m driving it. Duuuuh! It’s a car. That’s what you do with cars.

If I wanted something I could sit and look at I’d have bought a painting.

If I wanted to make money, I’d have taken the Cadillac money and invested it. (I hear those dot-com companies are the up and coming thing. . . ;))

It’s a freaking car. It’s made to be driven. And dammit, I’m going to drive it!

Don’t even get me started on the folks who get all honked about my taking my diecast model cars out of the box to display 'em.

Zap!

[sup]*[/sup]These are the cars that are actually running and licensed. We’re not going to talk about the parts cars or the Amazing Studebaker That Will Never Be Finished.

One more “Use it or don’t buy it” guy checking in…

A few years ago, I bought a wildly expensive North Face jacket (back when they were still made in the US and the best you could buy.) As I was planning a month-long trip to Alaska, one of my friends asked me whether I was going to buy a poncho at Wal-Mart so I didn’t “mess up my good coat.” Uhhh, no. I bought the damn thing to keep rain and snow off me, and it won’t do a very good job of that four thousand miles away. Needless to say, I took the coat, it worked, I smiled.

FWIW, I’m still on a college campus, and those damn things seem to be on the back of every frat guy and sorority girl on earth–I’ll literally see dozens of 'em on a typical winter day. Without fail, every single one will be Pristine, with nary a mark or sign of wear on it. I bask in the warm glow of self-satisfaction when I march through that crowd wearing my worn, faded, motor-oil-from-flipping-a-snowmobile-over-on-top-of-me-stained jacket.

Use it!

Not to mention the fact that, if you use it and destroy it, North Face will replace it for free. “Lifetime Guarantee” and all that. I have an ex whose on his 4th jacket in 6 years.

That’s what I said… No biggie, man. I love driving it. As a matter of fact, if the folks at work would let me take off for a week starting tomorrow, I’d hop in the car and just freaking drive. I’d probably head to Maryland to see one of my best friends, then cut over to DC, maybe even drive down to Florida.

Florida?? Really?? If you happen to stop in Jax… :smiley:

Regardless of how long you drive it, a five year car loan is a stupid idea (well, buying a car on credit is silly anyway, but five years is just bad).

There’s always a cost benefit equation.

I collect books. I do not read the books I collect. If I want to read the book, I buy a second used copy and read that.

My wife and I took a recent 15-day road trip. We chose to rent a car instead of using ours. For $300 we were able to rent a car that got better gas mileage. I calculate that we saved about $60-70 on gas and another $60 on oil changes during the trip. Throw in the wear and tear on the car (which is getting old) and we felt that it made sense (plus it was much more comfortable to sleep in the rental than in our car).

But for the most part, we buy things to use them.

A tranparent guitar?
A corvette?
X-men comics?

Looks like you’re not going to have to worry about those kids for a looooong time. :stuck_out_tongue:

I disagree. What if the $40K you’d spend on a car is earning 10% in your stock portfolio and the loan you take on the car is only at 7%?

You want crazy? I got crazy.

Many years ago when I was a child the family would often drive up to visit my grandmother on weekends. Every once in a while we would also stop by my great aunt and uncle’s place (grandmother’s sister and her husband). Their house was invariably immaculate, not a thing out of place or dusty. Of course, all the furniture was covered in that thick plastic that stuck to your legs whenever you sat on it so that probably helped. I was afraid to touch anything over there for fear that I might mess it up and bring down the Wrath of the Adults down upon my timid self.
Well it was a number of years down the road, after I was grown, when my mom told me that the reason great aunt and uncle’s house was so neat was because they didn’t live in most of it! Apparently they actually lived in the basement part and only came upstairs when they had company.

And you thought plastic on the couch was odd…

Darn it. Ignore that superfluous “down” please.

Yeah, yeah. So I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a frickin’ Toys “R” Us kid.

But I have to say-if I have a daughter, she is NOT playing with my dolls. No no no no no no no!!!

Not that I don’t play with them-brush their hair, hold, them, fix their clothing. But they aren’t toy-toys.

Ditto my paperdolls.

A couple of years ago, the accountant in our office went ballistic because one of her diamond earrings was missing. It was not because of the dollar value of the earring, but because her husband gave it to her, and she was planning on passing them down to her beloved granddaughter (then age 2 or 3?) some day. Even though we all had an important deadline to meet the next day, we all combed the office looking for it. (She found it later that day when she went home — it had fallen off on her bed at home.)

Several of us use the ultrasonic cleaner in the office (which was used to clean our drafting pens back in the day drafting was done by hand) to clean our engagement rings from time to time. The next time one of us had it out, we made the rounds of the office to see who else wanted to clean their rings. Our accountant didn’t have hers. She had taken her diamond earrings, her ENGAGEMENT ring, and several other pieces of jewelry she hoped to pass down to her granddaughter and placed them in a safety deposit box.

Several of us tried to persuade her that the jewelry would mean so much more to her granddaughter if she had actually had a chance to see Grandma wear it, and that a woman actually was entitled to wear her own engagement ring, but she couldn’t be persuaded.

Ditto me on the beanie baby thing, too. I think it’s sick to give a kid a toy, and then tell them they can’t play with it. (My sister collected the Madame Alexandra dolls, though.)

You should see the looks of utter horror I get when people find out I buy the beanie buddies (the bigger beanies) for the dogs.

They love them. They’re soft. They’re well weighted. They’re about 10 bucks a crack. I’m told they are also highly collectible. So mine are well loved, and drooled on. So sue me.

Woof.

Elly