No kidding. Why not just buy some elbows when you were at the store instead?
I guess my logic was that I want to get rid of stuff in the basement that has been gathering dust for years and which I spent good money for, once.
But as the cost of the caps increases there would be some point at which I would buy elbows and throw out the tees or return them to "stock".
Also, working with the tees would have cost me more of my labor than they are worth.
If I were doing this job for pay for someone else I would have bought the elbows and minimized my solder joints and my risk that this assembly would leak.
Maybe I just wanted the soldering practice.
Since I did recover the money I spent on these tees this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs
probably does not apply, but, from this same link,
". . .many humans are loss-averse and thus normally act irrationally when making economic decisions."