My thoughts exactly. I looked into the average costs of getting a patent and it seems to be about $1,000. Unless I'm not looking in the right spot.
I thought about doing what's called a "poor man's patent", where you mail yourself a few pictures and drawing of your idea. The date stamp the post office puts on that sealed envelope then proves you had that idea at that time. That's all it does though. No protection against copiers, just proof you had the idea first. Since that's pretty much useless too, there's no point in even wasting a stamp on a vain effort to protect my idea.