OOAK Table Tennis Forum

Just a half serious rant, please don't be alarmed.

I indeed just had this crazy thought.... explaining below

As a new to the sport, I am going through this EJ stage.
I have to try everything and select something that I will stick to.
Nothing to worry about, I went through same thing in lawn tennis, bought 7 or 9 rackets, and oh boy how many strings I have tried. However last 10 years I am playing with the same racket and approximately same string set up, occasionally trying something that got my interest.
Fortunately/unfortunately enough my strings last me around 10-15 hours of play, then they break.
So my try-on cycle is very short. (Luckily I string myself, otherwise I would go broke)

Now, with TT rubbers.
I just can't wait till I can change them. They last so long.
The problem is, I hate waste, I just cannot tolerate waste, so I cannot just take it off and throw it in the bin.
Although I did this to a couple rubbers already, but they were completely out of wack with me.

Otherwise, if the rubber performs more or less well I just cannot throw it out.
And I would like to shorten my try-on cycles, I kinda ready to settle by now and focus on my game.
DILEMMA!!!!

Have to buy another blade then. After all, you are going to need a spare anyway for competition, right? In case you break the one you are playing with?

With more blades, you need to have more rubbers. A spare is useful, so no waste. Problem solved.

I hate to break it to you, you're supposed to find this out yourself after spending hundreds of dollars on different rubbers in the course of 2-3 years. They're all more or less the same. Not exactly the same, but not really enough to make that much of a difference. I'm talking about normal, max-sponge inverted rubbers, of course... thin sponge, pips-out and anti (and stuff like Reflectoid) are, of course, quite different.

Iskandar

Just play more and your rubbers will last shorter

Somehow I've heard this one before and it struck me that this might be true...
But yes, I am supposed to find this out for myself, there is no way around, unfortunately.

Gladly, but max I can squeeze out is 3-5 hours a week.
Happy to have that as well.

Actually, you will find, once you start buying the super expensive German and Japanese rubbers like Tenergy and Evolution MX-P and Blue Fire, that the things shrink and go dead after an impressively short amount of time, maybe a month or two. Two problems solved.. not only do you get to buy and try more rubber, you get to spend considerably larger amounts of money as well. The sad part about it is that, until you actually try the expensive rubbers, you really don't know what you're missing.

Iskandar

I kinda suspect that I am not missing that much.
And I've got 2 pounds of chinese rubbers to go through first

Well, that should last you 5-10 years. Talk to you then...

did you try selling your rubbers or giving them away to other people

get rid of rubber by selling it to make space for more rubbers while also gaining some money out of it to buy more rubbers

Such may be the case but you won't be sure until you've tried the expensive stuff...

Iskandar

Kinda defeats the purpose as I wouldn't have tried it, which was why I bought it in the first place...

But I did offer my old rackets with rubbers to other players
Those were 729 FX rubbers... tried but not taken (were free!) unfortunately

One currently plays with Sriver, was too much difference for him... I might just drop them into the pile of rackets for the folks without their own gear... yep there are some like that... they just come and grab whatever... but that would be like casting pearls before swine...

ROFL... I can just imagine what happened, considering what you went through...

Yeah, I have a tupperware container of used sheets, one day I took it to a club and just gave away a bunch of used sheets. Back then I wasn't using them very much before trying other sheets, so a lot were practically new. I did get rid of a number but I still have half of the sheets left. This was before I started trying expensive sheets - those you don't just discard after a couple months, those you use booster on and keep playing with until they become slick.

Iskandar

for shame man

729 FX are nice rubbers, quite lackluster for today's game but one can still appreciate them

wouldve took those rubbers home with me, my current 729 is starting to separate