While cosplaying is a great hobby for many, people still want to know how to save money while doing it. This is normal because cosplaying can be expensive sometimes, especially when you go big with your costuming. That said, you want to know how to go about it cost-effectively.
Best Ways to Save Money While Cosplaying?
There are many strategies you can use to save money while cosplaying. This article will focus on eight of the best ways to go about it.
Recycle
One of the most effective ways to cut expenses on your cosplay events is to recycle and reuse your previous costume pieces. While it is great to get new costumes, they might not come cheaply, and you’d be inflating your budget. Instead, if you’ve got any high-quality wigs available, you can style them to fit your character variations.
Also, any other costume you have can be further customized to fit another combo for your costume of another character. However, it’s worth noting that not all costume pieces can be customized to fit many uses.
Consider Discount or Shopping with Coupons
There are some things you still can’t purchase second-hand, and that’s where shopping with coupons comes in handy. Every cosplay costume store (local and online) offers some discounts on their online platforms. Or if you are having a hard time checking out which store’s promo codes are perfect, you may visit promo-codes.pl to check the stores that offer the best promo codes for your needs. With this platform, you can comfortably compare and choose the stores that offer the most favorable promo codes — such as ASOS or Answear — and coupons on cosplay gadgets, costumes and clothes.
Spice it All Up
Another effective way of saving money is by thinking outside the regular use of your normal items, clothing, and mind. Sometimes, the character you have in mind to dress like doesn’t require much to clone.
So, instead of spending big on new items, all you need is a little bit of creativity and wholesome use of your mind. You can make the best out of old items, turning them into costume items.
Thrift Shops
Thrift shops are ideal sources of cosplay items, and it goes beyond the clothing. You can make good use of the toy sections to get some costume items. There, you’d be able to see the right side of things you’re going to be working with.
Ranging from local thrift shops to online eCommerce platforms, these stores usually offer some amazing opportunities to get the items you need at a reduced cost.
Aside from the toy section, you need to look out for the costume section. This is because cosplayers are fond of selling their old cosplay creations at cheap amounts in thrifts.
Selling Off Your Old to Buy the New
This involves you selling off all your old creations so that you can buy new items. Here, it gets interesting because creating and selling cosplay items are much different.
Typically, many cosplayers go to social media groups to sell their costumes at cheaper prices. Depending on how good your cosplay outfit and items are, you will get a crowd of cosplayers bidding to buy them from you. So, you can sell these old items and get some money that you can add to get new items.
Gang Cosplaying
It is possible to save money if you have a friend or friends who love to cosplay. You all can team up and custom-create your cosplay costumes. Also, if you’re lucky to have one of them as a seamstress or in the fashion industry, you probably should collaborate with that person.
In addition, in your team, you can get everyone to use their skills to help create your designs and costumes. This will further help you save costs.
Work with an Itemized Budget
If you’re shopping solo, one of the best ways to save money while cosplaying is to work on an itemized budget. Ensure that your budget is detailed to everything single thing you need to get. Also, if you already have some within your reach, you don’t need to buy them again.
This is one of the most crucial parts of shopping for cosplay because you will see a lot of catchy items and materials outside of your budget. As a solution, ensure to write out a good and well-planned budget for the things you’d be getting, and stick to it.
Be Open-Minded
Being open-minded while shopping for cosplay is essential for so many reasons. One of which is because if you’re sticking to a tight budget for your costumes and don’t end up seeing what you want, you might need to change plans.
Additionally, if you see what you’re looking for and it’s way above your budget, you don’t want to borrow some money and get into unnecessary debts for a wild hobby.
In any of these cases, you might need to change plans and have a substitute plan or have someone suggest different costumes entirely that won’t affect your budget.
Final Thoughts
Some of the best ways to save money while cosplaying include recycling, spicing it all up, thrift shopping, and selling off your old costumes and gadgets to buy new ones. Also, discount shopping, gang cosplaying, working with an itemized budget, and being open-minded can work wonders.
Essentially, you should know that while cosplaying is a great hobby, it would be a shame if you had to get into a pile of debt just to do it. We advise that you cut your costs as much as possible and only spend what you can afford.
