What has been your costliest mistake in this hobby?

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.

I got busted forging prescriptions for a controlled opiate. So I lost my job and had to sell my system and $30,000 record collection. So about a $70,000 mistake. Now I listen to headphones and have a nice little system. Lucky to be alive. Been on Suboxone for 6 years. Better than methadone.

@elliottbnewcombjr,

’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.’


I wouldn’t be too surprised if they wouldn't have wanted them even if they had been intact.

It is a difficult notion, certainly for me, to get into my head that so much of the stuff that I’ve spent so many years getting hold of means so little to friends and family.

I think we attempt to create our own personalised worlds of experience, much like the kings and emperors in the days of old, which can ultimately have little meaning for anyone else. Much like Charles Foster Kane, but he was fortunate enough to have Xanadu, most of us are grateful for digital storage.

Ultimately, our entire expenditure on our audio hobby has be valued for what it has been worth to us, what meaning it had for us, and what pleasure it gave us.

It can be a serious mistake to think that our gear worth as much as we might like to believe, or anywhere near what we might have paid for it.

This industry is routinely littered with overpriced, overpromoted rubbish. Anyone unlucky enough to fall for it is therefore consequently forced to stick with it or accept considerable losses in moving it on.

But then audiophiles aren’t likely to get into audio to make money, are they?

Ultimately, our entire expenditure on our audio hobby has be valued for what it has been worth to us, what meaning it had for us, and what pleasure it gave us.