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What's the cheapest thing you had bought that by the end of its usefulness made you say "wow, this was worth a lot more than what I've paid for!"

Mine... My Xbox 360 slim only costed 129 euro back in 2012 and to this day still work like brand new, you would think that the disc drive would stop working but no. Never had the need of open it or clean it's insides. Still great, I just don't use it anymore since I feel it's outdated and loading speeds are better nowadays.

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  • I bought a straw hat for a dollar at a yard sale as I walked past during my job delivering packages

    Coming in second is a goofy novelty cane I got from a dollar store and used for a while for a leg injury

    Third is a box fan for 20.

  • For me, it was probably the Yakuza games series on sale at the PlayStation store. I don't game very much, so I wait to get things until I find them near free, and during the start of Covid I went looking for a game and got Yakuza 0 for $5. Got probably 100 hours in that game, and I picked up all the others (1-7) all for about the same price, so I've gotten hundreds of hours of gameplay for less than $50.

    It's sort of GTA-like, but the protagonist is actually a good person, so I enjoy it more for that, and it's more minigame centric. There's some great story, and lots of funny gags throughout.

    • Hit up 8 yet, or waiting for a price cut? I played it subbed cuz man that Kiryu dub was not it.

      Also, gave Ishin or Man Who Erased his Name a shot? The former is its own thing but the latter ties in with 7, does the boss fight from 5 right, and has a peak ending.

      Oh and if you haven't messed with them, Judgment and Lost Judgment are both great, their own protag and crew, but set in the same universe. Highly recommend and on sale fairly regularly. I know their on half off ish on Steam atm.

      • I've done 0-7, Like a Dragon, and Judgement. I have Lost Judgement installed, but haven't gotten to start it yet. I've been meaning to finish Persona 4's bonus content first, but haven't touched it in a couple months. Very much looking forward to Ishin, though I hear it's a bit slow on PS4. I don't know much about Infinite Wealth or Gaiden, as I've been trying to stay spoiler free as much as possible.

        The dubs of Kiryu and Majima took me right out of Like a Dragon! I didn't know they were going to appear, and when they did, it felt like "Fake Kiryu" from the other games showing up with that voice. That's not my Kiryu! 😅

    • I tried Yakuza 1 once but I just couldn't enjoy it. Is too weird and there's too much standing around taking. Too much pauses.

      • Nothing wrong with that. It's not as constant action of a thing for sure, the real fights being spread out after the exposition is what makes them more impactful to me, the regular street fights are mainly just grinding while you get used to the combos and are kinda boring. The varied minigames give you a break, and I like the comedy bits to swing the mood back and forth from serious to funny. I enjoy the GTA games, but find them much darker and the protagonists aren't as likeable to me. Yakuza has Kiryu as a relatively good guy, and the games are all mostly in the same city over the years, so you see the city grow, businesses come and go, and you see your NPC friends change jobs over the years, so it is a really organic experience, but it's not all fresh and brand new, so people could get bored of being in the same places a lot of the time. It's more of a book experience than an action movie.

    • I can't see it as GTA-like because GTA-like to me sounds more like "the ability to cause open-world chaos if the story's not doing it for me at the moment". Kiryu's actually too good of a guy; I will never knock his series, but I do not see it as competing with GTA, and that's how one of the homies jumped me into it. (Really, it feels more like a fleshed-out Tekken Force game.) I'm still looking for a GTA-like ever since Saints Row died an ignominious death.

  • The family xbox360 of my house was probably cheap enough. Haven't played it in a while, but it's definitely the greatest console to grace my life. Definitely the most played console throughout my life (PC/phone not included). I absolutely love it, especially since it's where all my Hitman Blood Money/Absolution, Castle Crashers, Sonic Unleashed, and Borderlands 1 saves are trapped.

    This also reminds me that I should probably find a way to back up my saves and account besides just a thumb drive because there's currently no xbox online service available anymore and I have around 1.5+ decades worth of stuff on there I don't wanna lose.

    Edit: also a leather wallet I got from Walmart sometime around 2012-13. I don't know how long a wallet should last, but I would never expect a wallet I buy today toast even a fraction of the time this has. George brand, says Italian Leather beneath the brand name, don't believe it that it's actually Italian leather because there's no way a Walmart would ever have something that nice.

  • Bitcoin basically any year prior to now. You probably think it's a scam or not useful or whatever, but it's had a continuous average trend of growth for 15 years no matter how you measure it (market cap, number of nodes, transaction volume, etc). So apparently a lot of other people including large investment banks disagree. If you thought it would disappear next year because it's a bubble, you've been wrong 15 years in a row and it's maybe worth reconsidering. Bitcoin's market cap places it in the top 25 countries by GDP, higher than Sweden! If you're curious about pros/cons/FAQ and myth-busting around it check out http://bitcoin.rocks

    Pretty much everything negative you've heard about it is wrong, terribly un-nuanced to point of being wrong, or about something that isn't bitcoin. Scam cryptos rugging people? Not Bitcoin. Stupid monkey JPEGs selling for a million dollars? Not Bitcoin. FTX/exchange collapses? Not Bitcoin. Slow transactions and high fees? Not Bitcoin (thanks to Bitcoin lightning), transactions confirm in under a second for pennies in fees. Anybody can print Bitcoin? Nope, the supply is capped at 21 million coins. People with the most coins control the network? Nope, amount of coins is totally unrelated to network consensus and rules. Boiling the oceans? It moves trillions of dollars in value every year using < 1% of energy, mostly from renewables (as they are cheapest) and helps even out demand curves/incentivizes provisioning renewable electricity. Makes electricity cost more? Nope, it makes electricity cost less because miners only buy the cheapest electricity possible (off-peak hours) so they don't compete with regular users. That means you aren't paying for "un-used supply/capacity" with your bill because your grid always has a buyer for any surplus electricity generated.

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