Background, the length of which I apologize for: I’ve been a guitar player for almost thirty years. I play left-handed, and the unavailability of left-handed thumbpicks when I was starting out led me to play fingerstyle with a flatpick and middle and ring fingers. This works for some stuff, but makes a lot of fast rolls and Travis picking difficult, if not impossible. This became very apparent when I took up Dobro last year.
So the first of this year, I decided to learn to play with a thumbpick. I bought a left-handed Dunlop thumbpick, and within a few weeks my Dobro playing had improved a lot. But for bare-fingered picking on a flattop, the blade of the pick was too big, and still felt awkward.
This past week, I bought a lefty thumbpick made by Fred Kelly – it has a shorter blade than the Dunlop. I am in absolute heaven – it’s comfortable as hell, and improved my accuracy manifold in a matter of days. I feel like I’ve been picking all these years with a heavy weight on my hand, and it’s just been lifted.
The cost of this thumbpick: seventy-five cents.
My question: what is the smallest amount of money you ever spent that brought you the most pleasure?
Probably any one of many books I bought for 10p from School Jumble Sales or Fetes as a kid. Though my first iron wok (about 5.00 UK pounds from China-Town) ranks up there as well.
I once bought a solid gold watch for a penny. Turns out it grants wishes if you set both hands to 12. If you set both hands to 4, it gives you herpes. I don’t know why. Good thing I still had more wishes…
50 cents for The Muppet Movie Soundtrack on cassette. It’s great to sing along to in the car. I may even roll my windows down at redlights and see if I can get a chorus going.
At an estate sale I spent $2 on a trashy little plastic camera that takes interestingly weird pictures. I suppose you’d have to add in the cost of film/developing, but I would have spent that anyway on putting film through a different camera.
I paid a quarter at a thrift store for a 78 RPM record that was worth over $3000 at the time, due to its extreme scarcity. I was unbelievably happy about it. I took it home, sat at the kitchen table, cleaned it, and put it safely on the chair next to the wall. Then my brother came in, sat at the table, and guess where he put his feet.
I paid $7 for a record I had been searching for, for 38 years, to replace the one I broke all those years ago. You wouldn’t think that something could be so hard to locate.
Most recently, it cost me nothing to ease my wife’s mind. She got a lot of her hair cut off (to donate to Locks For Life), and got a short haircut for the first time in years. She was so worried that I would hate it, she was practically in tears. When she came in, I said, “Come here, I want to kiss that beautiful girl with the pretty hair.” Happy all around.
Some computer games i’ve spent alot of time playing only cost me a few bucks. I bought half life on ebay for about $11 and I have played alot of DoD, counterstrike & team fortress.
My TiVo was another good investment, it costs $12.95/month but I could get a TiVo through my provider for $5 a month.
First I once spent $0.15 of my employer’s money for a washer. Saved her a plumber’s visit to replace the valve, and piping associated with it. I was just enjoying being able to flabbergast her with the fact that I did know what I was talking about.
I also found, a few years ago, in a second-hand bookstore, a mint condition copy of Larry Niven’s Ringworld - first edition for $1.00. Many SF fans may have heard that he screwed up the rotation of the Earth in the beginning of the book, and had it rotating west to east, not east to west. I turned around and sold it on eBay for quite the markup.
Oh, I have a “cheap” happiness story to add! I bought an amber necklace on Ebay for 50 cents. I took it apart for the beads and restrung them alternating the amber with freshwater pearls that I had lying around. The result was a very striking necklace that is long enough to wind around my throat twice. I’ve had dozens of compliments from fellow SCAdians (even the jewelry gurus!) on it.
Saw some animal crackers of the sort back from when I was a kid (and possibly much older than that). Someting like $.69. Fizzy didn’t understand that for quite a while. “Why would you get something to eat and then not eat it?”
First thing that popped into my head was the $7 I spent on two tickets into the Japanese Tea Garden at Golden Gate Park while hanging out with Miller. Walking around helped me switch from “helpful internet buddy” mode to “screw that; I want to date this guy” mode.
One of the things I like about the Treo 600 palm pilot/phone/camera (which costs a lot more than $2, unfortunately) is that the camera takes terrible pictures, but they’re terrible in an interesting way. The colors are washed out and they’re fuzzy around the edges, ending up looking kind of like the picture you link to. I almost like the pictures of the city I’ve taken with the phone more than the ones I’ve taken with a “real” digital camera, just because the phone pics look like something taken with an ancient Polaroid you dug up at a thrift store.
I bought my betta fish Bocephus at Wal-Mart for about three bucks, and a gallon-sized glass vase and rocks for the bottom. Total: around $10. I’ve had him for over a year and he’s just the coolest pet ever and he’s twice the size of a normal betta for some reason. I love that little guy. He was a wise investment.
I have a ton of antique chemistry textbooks (late 1910’s - late 1920’s) that I got for free. My JC library has a table in the foyer where they dump stuff they don’t need; I scored a lot of good books from that table.
The coolest two though are: 1. the chemistry textbook printed in 1929 with color plates and 2. an organic chem lab manual. It’s hardcover with perforated pages. The coolest part is the homework and tests still left in it, done by a certain Paula Stole in the Fall/Winter of 1929 (I am happy to report that she got an 88% on the midterm). There are also study guides.
What’s sad is that I’ve never taken chemistry in my life (highschool dropout and I never got around to it at JC - although I should, if I get my chem out of the way I am 4 classes away from my A.A. in Biology).
I thought it was so cool to see science homework from a woman in those days. It’s one of my favorite little treasures.
I also paid $1.50 for a copy of “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” that is small (I mean, 2 inches on a side, maybe) and leather bound. The title page is ripped out unfortunately so I don’t know when it was printed. It is one of a many of the “Little Leather Library” collection. I got it at an antique store in Ventura.
The $6 I spent on a pregnancy test. The $3 I spent on my first jar of nutella. The $50 we paid to adopt our beloved cat. The $1.50 for the perfect card for my husband on our first wedding anniversary. The $10 garage sale suit that helped me get my first real job.
