I bought a box of 100 patches a few years ago and intend to keep using them. I have a couple of tubes with 8 or so patches in them. I will keep on patching them until I get a hole too close to another patch or the valve fails.

I passed a guy a while back with flat and stopped. He was waving a $10 bill in the air and begging for a tube. I stopped and pull one out of my saddle bag. When he unrolled it and saw that it had like 6 or 7 patches on it, he was shocked. He still used it and I declined the $10.

On my MTB I run tubeless and have not had a flat in years. I am thinking of switching my road bike over to tubeless this summer.