Living the Hobby Budget: the first evaluation

So it has been 3 months now since I put myself a on a hobby budget of 125 euros a month, so how have I managed to do in that period?

For the original calculations of how I came to that number, stroll back in my hutchieclutchie of posts, but it generally broke down amongst the lines of 45 euros for Lego, 60 euros for Saint Seiya and 20 euros for the rest.

Well, so far I have managed it quite succesfully, and mainly due to a change from buying what I wanted and dumping what I didn`t need, to actual trading things around to reach goals.  This of course has happened the most in the cards part of the hobby, and last month I ended up with a bonus of almost 35 euros to be traded in this month, and I did as you could see on the post of my saint Seiya cards yesterday.

 Success, it comes in all shapes and... rrrrr... shaaaapes

Now of course there is the Antwerp Convention coming up in 2 weeks, and I actually managed by saving up my small change (do not worry friendly local trader, they have been exchanged into bills) to be able to fund that Cherno Alpha from NECA I`d wanted, and possibly also the Pacific Rim Year Zero graphic hardback.

So far so good...

I`ll also be hauling back the Omega Orion Eden cloth, but that doesn`t count as I payed it already when I pre-ordered it at Archonia before the New Year.

Trading off my older defunct hobbies, aswell as resisiting to buy new games for the PS (though i have to look for the newest Wolf Amongst Us and Walking Dead episodes soon, has enabled me to survive on my hobby fix so far, and it is being set aside for a mass buy when either a new Saint Seiya Crusade series appears or the Pacific Rim trading card set comes out, something I`m also working on already by looking around for connections over the internet these days.

 Full base sets, the ammo for my card trading cannons

But do I have big expenses coming up?

Well, not really in the `big` category, though I will be needing quite a few 2x2 `macaroni` bricks in white, and a few less in red, for my `Silvermoon` lego MoC.  Estimating this only costing a few euros as they tend to go on BrickLink around 0.05 per brick on average, this shouldn`t pose to much of a budget breaker.

So what is the conclusion of three months of already cut down expenses?

Well, I did rediscover the `sports` in trading like I penned down earlier, though when you try to scape together for a bigger something (Kre-O Enterprise, I`m looking at you!), I often feel more like this

then like a highly speeding racing machine.  On the other hand, it forces me now at moments to think and rethink stuff I fancy, and it has helped eliminating `impulse buys`, so I guess it`s a good experiment.  We`ll see how it turns out after the Convention and streetsale season is in full swing, so expect me back around the summertime with a second evaluation!

Ciao ciao