Asklemmy

Your question is a little too narrow for my tastes. Some of the best cheap purchases that I've made are things that I still have now. They haven't worn out or broken or become useless.

In 2001 I bought a new cast iron fry pan for $20 that I use on regular basis and it's marvelous. Around the same time, I bought some used silverware from a thrift store and I still use that everyday.

Two other purchases that go back more than 20 years are my pocket knife and my 1/4 inch hex driver, both of which I bought new but were not particularly expensive and they are working wonderfully to this very day.

Do free things count?

Sleeping masks. They are so underrated fr

Plastic cutlery. Not the single use kind, but more like normal cutlery. Originally bought when my oldest was a baby, but now I'm the one using them the most.

I travel a lot for a living, and I often find myself arriving late, after any eateries in the area have closed. I started by packing a metal fork and some cup noodles in my checked luggage, but it didn't take me long to instead start keeping cup noodles and plastic cutlery in my carry-on. This way I can go to bed without being hungry even if/when United (why is it always United?) misplace my luggage.

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.

I bought a fancy US made spatula for my grill. They make a smaller cheaper one that I added on impulse. That little guy is a champ and gets 5x the use of the big fancy one.

My Logitech G203 is still alive after 8 years of constant use. Never tried to fix, but it autorepaired itself of double click (both buttons) , miss click and bad contact. At this point I am afraid of opening it to clean inside and it just cease to exist, I still clean outside tho.

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.

Ski goggles, and they're still good. I got them like 10ish years ago after having to walk put in some serious sub-zero harsh January wind that was making my eyes hurt. $40, now my eyes are fine and my glasses stay nice and snow-free.

I've lived in Chicagoland all my life and sometimes the winters can get almost Minnesotan, so it pays to have some quality eye protection.

I bought a RoboGrip, self adjusting wrench, maybe 35 years ago a a Sears iirc. One of the best tools I ever brought and still going strong.

I have some Shoes for Crews boots I bought back in roughly 2001-2. They're a little less waterproof higher up now due to some cracking (probably because they sat in a hot storage unit for a while), but I still frequently wear them today when working outside.