Ah, Crambo. You have just discovered one of the more-important rules of posting on a forum - explain your thoughts completely.
Your initial post portrayed you as most replied - cheap. However, your follow-up where you further explained that you would consider buying a bag of the clips, if available, makes perfect sense. If you had completed your thought in the first posting, I imagine there would have been no disparaging comments. I keep telling my DW to share her entire thought with me, so I don't misinterpret. I think this was the same situation.
Good luck in future posts. By the way, I did a search online, and did not find a source for bags of the clips.