What has been your costliest mistake in this hobby?

@kairosman for us it’s Audio.  Audio is our dope! 

mkgus

I love when trouble leads to 'better'.

what was the design error?

millercarbon

now that you mention CD’s,

1st: 8 tracks (hundred of them).

Cassettes made 8 tracks cheap, 6 for $5.00 (incl tax .88c each). Had no disposable money in those days, so every payday I would wander the music store, decided to buy stuff I would never spend any real money on, listen to them when I retire. Acquired a few hundred. Pressure pads rotted, worthless.

2nd: CD’s (thousands of them).

I quit smoking 32 years ago. Decided, as an incentive, the bills were getting paid, I will spend my cigarette money on music and music equipment. Carton a week was $700. in 1988. Gave myself a yearly rise in pay as cost of cigarettes increased .../yr, now $3,900 in NJ, $6,700 NYC.

Aside from some nice equipment, I bought a load of CDs, so many, I needed space, and normal 12" binders fit the inside discs between the rings, not fitting the booklet, so, Harrington’s had very nice deep leather binders. each page 8 discs with booklets, fit 80-100 stuffed each. Music, Movies, Music DVDs, eventually 45 binders. I never imagined how 22 years would add up (I quit this 10 years ago, when I retired age 62).

Then, rediscover LP, I play few CD’s now, but not many, and I am replacing my favorite CD’s with Vinyl if available.

Cannot sell them, plastic cases tossed, and I thought my sons would inherit this ’flawless’ collection. They don’t have a CD player in their house or car.

Thank goodness I kept my LP’s, people who quit LP gave me theirs, ..., weeding now, found successful cleaning method, down to 2,500.

Lost money: cost of 300 8 tracks, 3,000 CD’s,  37 leather binders, that’s no small potatoes.

Selling my (4) Marantz 9's for $10K over 30 years ago.  They went to SONY HQ in Tokyo but i kept the Marantz 7C which I am just now getting ready to sell.

More than a few to name, but the one that really sticks is when I burned up a set of drivers that cost $600 ea. They were new for um, maybe a couple days before I got the idea to add a tube buffer that I had worked on, but did NOT test! You can't make it from the listening chair to the power switch in time, no matter what.