When the Invention System came out, I looked over the 50+ new badges associated with crafting and just sighed. The badge whore in me wanted them, but I didn't feel like it was something to be earned. There was no accomplishment in it, just a lot of cash spent, so I decided I'd just skip those. Recently, though, a windfall of a sale made me a ton of cash on that server, and the call of upping my badge count significantly was too great to be ignored. A quick transfer started the process, and I started on the long quest to Field Crafter, spending any time I wasn't teamed with friends bopping back and forth in Steel Canyon between Wentworth's, the University, and my SG base. As long as I was there, I took the opportunity to respond to fire alarms, and finally finished work on my Firefighter and Fire Chief badges.
Buying in bulk, leaving a bunch in the base's Enhancement Table and selling the rest, the badges slowly but surely got churned out. Those things that didn't sell well (say, level 10 Interrupt Reductions) were slapped on the market for 5 influence a piece, then bought by another character I made on the server just for that purpose, freeing up my market slots and giving me a lot of work towards the sales badges, too. Eventually, I was just down to that last "crafting numbers" badge, and I bought more base salvage than I've ever seen, hitting the Empowerment station to build tier 2 Base Components.
So, in the end, Afterlife Kid is now a Field Crafter and is up to 531 badges. He spent, give or take, something like 20 million, which isn't bad for that badge sequence (considering the crafting costs alone are 11 million and change). One of these days, I'll have to set him up to farm damage and containment badges...