Clip and Save

I'll admit to being a very frugal person. I have very few hobbies, and the only one on which I've spent an appreciable amount of money is Astronomy. Which you probably could already guess.

Back somewhere around 2003 I went to a local star party hosted by the MNAA. If you know the MNAA, "star party" is probably too formal a phrase for their get-togethers. I took along my Orion XT-10 Dob. One of the MNAA members let me try his Tele-Vue 31mm Type 5 Nagler with an OIII filter. At that point I had neither. If you know your eyepieces, you know that around then the 31 was one of the most expensive eyepieces around, and possibly one of  the heaviest. When I used it to look at the Veil Nebula, I was blown away. He and I decided that the 31 was made for the XT-10. Actually, given that back then they were both around $640, perhaps the XT-10 was made for the 31.

The hook had been set, and I realized the value of the 31.  There was no going back to my relatively inexpensive eyepieces, the best of which was a Panoptic 19. The 19 was a darn good eyepiece, but the 31 was something special. I had to have one.

But—how to pay for it? The Sunday advertisements gave the answer: By clipping grocery coupons. I held to a rule that I would only use coupons for things we normally used, not junk or extravagances. And several years later, I had saved up all the money I needed to buy the 31.  In fact, I kept clipping until I had enough for the OIII filter, too.

But wait, there's more to the story.  The person who hooked me on the 31 had sold his TV-102 a couple of years earlier to someone I knew from the annual star party at the Jeffers Petroglyphs. I had seen the 102 at that star party and greatly admired the views it provided. I became the 102's third owner in 2004. And yes, it works with the 31 as if the two were made for each other.

So why do I bring this up now? I've started clipping again, saving for a Canon EOS lens-to-ST-8300M adapter (about $300!).