There's some truth to this, but on the other hand I find it cost effective and useful in the long run to build up inventory by cheap kits. For example, if I ne

There's some truth to this, but on the other hand I find it cost effective and useful in the long run to build up inventory by cheap kits. For example, if I need specific resistor (and don't have any high precision/tolerance/current requirements — i.e. 90% of hobby projects) I could buy online: - 10 of them for maybe £3 - 100 of them for around £6 - a kit containing 1000 resistors of 25 different values for <£12 Not only is the last option exponentially better value, but it means that I almost certainly don't need to buy anything the next 10 or more times I need a resistor. There are a good number common components, fittings, etc. that I've found this works for. If you're doing specific high frequency, RF, hifi, etc. stuff, this approach might not work so well, but for other hobby electronics, messing around with microcontrollers and the like it's served me well.