History Main / CrackIsCheaper

* ''Webcomic/NerfNOW'' has this opinion about ''[[http://www.nerfnow.com/comic/2199 Hearthstone]]''.

* The ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode "[[Recap/BatmanTheAnimatedSeriese19ProphecyOfDoom Prophecy of Doom]]": [[spoiler:the villain is a toy collector who turned his toys into bombs to get the money to buy more toys]]

* Right before the submarine is submerged in ''Film/CrimsonTide'', Gene Hackman offers Denzel Washington a cigar with the admonition not to get too used to them, as they are "more expensive than drugs."

* This is a borderline Meta example since it's based on RealLife, but ''Series/PawnStars'' shows the opposite side of this trope with some people who make a living off it. The Harrisons frequently buy things because they know they'll be able to resell them to collectors who are willing to pay huge sums of money for antique guns, classic cars, historic documents, pop culture memorabilia, etc. Though sometimes one of them will buy such items for their own collections, especially if Rick encounters a rare item connected to his idol Creator/SteveMcQueen.

* The ''WesternAnimation/BatmanTheAnimatedSeries'' episode "Beware the Grey Ghost": [[spoiler:the villain is a toy collector who turned his toys into bombs to get the money to buy more toys]]

-->"You see, I need the money to buy more toys. I love toys. They can play songs. They can dance. They can even eat money. Oh, boy, can they eat money. All my money. [[spoiler: And then I remembered an episode of The Gray Ghost. And I knew what else a toy can do. It can carry a bomb. It can hold a city for ransom. Oh, the power of the toy. It can earn millions. Millions for the little old toy collector, me.]]"

* ''Theatre/CyranoDeBergerac'': This attitude is shown InUniverse (and deconstructed) by the baker [[FanDumb Ragueneau]]. His wife Lise remembers a time when he was a normal person, a SupremeChef with a successful bakery. But then he became infatuated with the poets and his lifestyle. In the first act he trades pies for theater tickets. In the second act he accepts poems in return for his food, [[ConspicuousConsumption pays too much to an assistant for baking a pie shaped like a lyre]] and cannot renounce even one of his precious poems. He's completely ruined in the beginning of the third act, [[YourCheatingHeart abandoned by his neglected wife Lise]] and attempts an InterruptedSuicide.

''On back issues of TheFlash."''

** This is because the bikes are one of only a few things that expensive that are actually reasonably priced. Poké Balls, a technology that lets people convert Pokémon into digital data... [[MagicFromTechnology somehow...]] costs as much as a bottle of water straight out of a vending machine. The game's currency is actually a CulturalTranslation of yen: a bike that could easily be folded up and fit into your backpack really ''would'' cost that much. Unfortunately this is lost on Western audiences.

** On both ''{{Series/Pawn Stars}}'' and ''{{Series/Counting Cars}}'' the word "boat" is said to be an acronym for "Bust Out Another Thousand".

* Anime/BusouShinki, in-universe & in real life. Those cute little Shnkis can [[IncrediblyLamePun blast your wallet.]]

* {{Phelous}}'s spinoff show ''Bootleg Zones'' has the Galaxy Warriors (a line of action figures based on HeManAndTheMastersOfTheUniverse) due to how many sublines, spinoffs, variants and bootlegs the figures have. He often refers to them as the "Galaxy Black Hole" or "Galaxy-Hole" when discussing them.

* In ''VideoGame/MassEffect3'', almost any weapon you failed to pick up during missions can be purchased afterwards at one of the numerous shops on the Citadel. Prices range from 4,000 credits for basic gear to 10,000 credits per top-tier InfinityMinusOneSword. Well, and then there's the Spectre Requisitions Office that sells the Black Widow sniper rifle, the M-11 Wraith shotgun and the M-77 Paladin heavy pistol, each of them the InfinityPlusOneSword of their respective category. They can be yours for 250,000 credits apiece, and that's just the Tier I version without any upgrades. If you start out with the cash bonus from importing an ME 2 save file, you'll have to finish ''a lot'' of missions before you can afford even one of them. If you start a game completely from scratch, you'll have to finish about ''half the game'' to scrape together the funds required. They're entirely worth their money, but damn if it isn't a pain in the ass to acquire them.

* A realistic example occurs in StarWars KnightsOfTheOldRepublic. The card game pazaak gives players the option to buy more powerful cards for their deck for a sum of credits that would be meaningful to a normal citizen of the galaxy, such as 25-200 credits. For comparison, a normal blaster rifle (the sort many characters in universe would carry around in a dangerous wilderness) costs 300 credits in this game, and high-stakes games of pazaak could be played for a couple of hundred credits. A top tier pazaak deck would run about a thousand credits, or about half of what Luke sold his used speeder (think car, but floating just off the ground) for in ANewHope.

*** It might be related to the aesthetic ideal of wabi-zabi, and to the Zen idea of the impermanence of all things�that wouldn't be the oddest place in Japanese culture that wabi-zabi has turned up.

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*** It might be related to the aesthetic ideal of wabi-zabi, and to the Zen idea of the impermanence of all things—that wouldn't be the oddest place in Japanese culture that wabi-zabi has turned up.

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* The ''Xtended'' GameMod for ''[[Videogame/{{X}} X3: Terran Conflict]]'' adds the Fuzzico® Fuzzy Dice collection, a series of twelve fuzzy UsefulNotes/{{dice}} which are valued by in-universe collectors. Their price varies from ''negative'' [[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture credits]] to hundreds of thousands on the black market, depending on the color of the dice. In-game however, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation they are worth only two credits]], simply being a BraggingRightsReward. The only way to acquire them is to loot the wrecks of civilian cargo freighters.

* For some bizarre reason, ''bikes'' in the Pokémon series are sometimes this, dating all the way back to the first game where a bike cost more money than the player could possibly carry. Not that this stopped an NPC from giving away a voucher to anyone who talked to him...

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Being a geek is tough. But never mind any social stigma, or trying to explain your hobbies to other people. Oh no. The hardest hits in Geekdom go straight to your bank account.

'''Add only InUniverse examples.'''

!!Examples:

--> ''You see, I need the money to buy more toys. I love toys. They can play songs. They can dance.'' They can even eat money. Oh, boy, can they eat money. All my money. [[spoiler: And then I remembered an episode of The Gray Ghost. And I knew what else a toy can do. It can carry a bomb. It can hold a city for ransom. Oh, the power of the toy. It can earn millions. Millions for the little old toy collector, me.]]

* ''{{Medabots}}'' has a main set of characters, the Medabots themselves, as expensive to buy and maintain. (Justified, in the fact that they are built to shoot missiles, lasers and other things.)

* ''CyranoDeBergerac'': This attitude is shown InUniverse (and deconstructed) by the baker [[FanDumb Ragueneau]]. His wife Lise remembers a time when he was a normal person, a SupremeChef with a successful bakery. But then he became infatuated with the poets and his lifestyle. In the first act he trades pies for theater tickets. In the second act he accepts poems in return for his food, [[ConspicuousConsumption pays too much to an assistant for baking a pie shaped like a lyre]] and cannot renounce even one of his precious poems. He's completely ruined in the beginning of the third act, [[YourCheatingHeart abandoned by his neglected wife Lise]] and attempts an InterruptedSuicide.

* The ''Xtended'' GameMod for ''[[Videogame/{{X}} X3: Terran Conflict]]'' adds the Fuzzico® Fuzzy Dice collection, a series of twelve fuzzy dice which are valued by in-universe collectors. Their price varies from ''negative'' [[WeWillSpendCreditsInTheFuture credits]] to hundreds of thousands on the black market, depending on the color of the dice. In-game however, [[GameplayAndStorySegregation they are worth only two credits]], simply being a BraggingRightsReward. The only way to acquire them is to loot the wrecks of civilian cargo freighters.

* ''CyranoDeBergerac'': This attitude is shown InUniverse (and deconstructed) by the baker [[FanDumb Ragueneau]] in this play. His wife Lise remembers a time when he was a normal person, a SupremeChef with a successful bakery. But then he get infatuated with the poets and his lifestyle. At the first Act, he pays theater’s tickets with pies. At the second Act, he accepts poems in return from his food, [[ConspicuousConsumption he pays to much money to an assistant for baking a pie with the form of a lyre]] and cannot renounce to even one of his precious poems. He will be completely ruined in the beginning of the third Act, [[YourCheatingHeart abandoned by his neglected wife Lisa]] and he will attempt an InterruptedSuicide.

-> ''Stop spending all our cash''\\
''On back issues of'' TheFlash

* Hinted at in ''Anime/YuGiOh''. While never specifically stated that cards cost vast sums of money, they do mention that the packs do cost something, assumably about the same as they do in real life. Considering that the characters are playing the game for a living, and that the rarer cards are more or less unique [[note]] ex. Dark Magician is only seen once outside of Yugi's deck. Not only is it a different color, after winning the duel, he gained possession of the card.[[/note]], so presumably they spend even more money building their decks than professionals do in real life.

* This is a borderline Meta example since it's based on RealLife, but ''Series/PawnStars'' shows the opposite side of this trope with some people who make a living off it. The Harrisons frequently buy things because they know they'll be able to resell them to collectors who are willing to pay huge sums of money for antique guns, classic cars, historic documents, pop culture memorabilia, etc.