Edit: so it turns out that every hobby can be expensive if you do it long enough.
Also I love how you talk about your hobby as some addicts.
Buy used.
The disk-less “cheaper” PS5 is 100% the more expensive option.
Also, if you buy a new game you’ll have the option to sell it on, recovering some of your initial investment.
With time I’ve learned that video games are probably the cheapest hobby I have. I literally had a minor crisis when my computer died and I started crunching numbers on switching hobbies temporarily and found the cost of a new computer was cheaper especially once I took into account the already sunk cost of my game library
I make a cross between dioramas and video games. It started out as a test to see if I could make something and now I am all in. It’s all I want to work on. I have spent so much money on old lcd screens
Sure here is a video https://peoplemaking.games/@Intelligentbean/110914972158457991
This sounds rad, would love to see one in action!
Sure here is a video https://peoplemaking.games/@Intelligentbean/110914972158457991
Electronics repair and projects
All I need is a soldering iron… well of course it needs to be digital! I also need a DMM for troubleshooting, as well an ociliscope. Guess I should also pick up a bench power supply so I don’t need to run everything through two leads of the DMM to find the amps. A couple years later Well this is a surface mount issue, I need a reflow heat gun.
I have most of this stuff except hot air rework statoon
Or go back to soldering iron unless it’s BGA
“Well I’m already upgrading to a new reflow station, I can prob also upgrade the soldering iron.”
Sex toys. My collection is worth more than my car.
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My Hismith premium sex machine is the most expensive followed by some of my Mr Hankey’s Toys such as XXXCalibur and Seahorse dildos.
As in fully functional animatronics with hapatic feedbacks, micro-hydrolics, and micro-heater elements? Oh, and whatthehay - synthetic voice? I’m guessing.
edit- moved this comment to here
Nothing that fancy but my wife has already expressed interest in one for threesome type situations should they become available.
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Here’s some of them. I don’t have a full collection picture.
That’s one hell of a depreciating asset ya got there.
If it a her and she’s hot its absolutely going up in value
Most of them are high end silicone toys from Bad Dragon and Mr Hankey’s toys and hold their value quite well. I purchased around 80% of them on the used market and can turn around and sell them for about the same amount so the depreciation hit is minimal.
TIL, there’s a market for used sex toys!
Photography ended up becoming a really expensive hobby for me. I started with a phone, and then realized I enjoyed doing wildlife photography, and you need a real camera with a decent zoom lens for that.
Fish tank.
This is a bottomless nightmare.
how come?
“Hey, we got a goldfish. Let’s put him in a goldfish bowl”
“Turns out a goldfish needs 20gal at least.”
“Apparently we should get a bubbler to oxygenate the water”
“We need how many water tests and chemicals to keep the biome healthy?!”
“He looks bored. Let’s get some decorations. Just a few.”
“He’s had the pirate theme going for a while. Let’s swap it out with the SpongeBob set.”
“If we got a bigger tank he could have a friend.”
Etc.
Instant (analog) photography and collecting pins and buttons. Turns out film is expensive and buying pins are expensive. Started out with friends giving me pins to stick on my bag and now I have close to hundred pins on my pin wall. At least they look pretty rad.
D&D. When I got back into it as an adult it was mostly because I could get into it for $0. I was dead broke at the time. I
pirated the booksdownloaded the free basic rules 😉 on my trash find laptop and was good to go.But man once I had money it turns out I really like collecting books and the D&D ones are not cheap. I do not want to think about how much I’ve spent.
Dice.
So. Many. Dice.
Definitely don’t count your books and multiply by 30 or so…
I’m a few hundred dollars in and I’m actually on my way out thanks to their grossness this spring. I’m too slow to have gone for many modules, but rules books were super fun and thus a money sink. I’m trying to move my group over to PbtA (cheap by comparison) or Genesys (have you seen the cost of those DICE?!).
The real flood gates opened when the license controversy happened and I decided to try other RPGs. Multiple core books of multiple RPGs gets expensive fast 😁
Magnet fishing.
I bought a kit that included a reasonably sized 360° magnet, rope, grappling hook and protective cover for about £120 thinking that it would be good enough to keep me satisfied for a while.
After my first trip out and having to carry a load of scrap metal about a mile back to the car, I bought a cart for £80 so I could cart it all back instead. After having to use my car to pull my magnet out of the harbour on Saturday I’ve bought a cheap winch and a tow rope to anchor it to things for £25 for when it gets stuck somewhere I can’t use my car.
And of course I wanted a bigger magnet almost immediately, but I’ve managed to hold off on that so far. Saying that it’s fairly likely I will get an upgrade from Bondi magnets when the site launches as long as the price is competitive with Magnetar (I suspect it’s a partnership and the magnets will be identical, but we’ll see)
What was so big you needed your car?
I don’t know, I didn’t pull the object out with it. I’m guessing it got caught on something large and got wedged in so I couldn’t just overcome the force of the magnet to get it off. Could have been something huge and magnetic, or could’ve just been stuck between rocks. I was just happy to not lose my magnet
Thank you for sharing
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Woodworking. You start with a few tools to fix things in your house, and suddenly, you got vintage handtools worth thousands of euros and you seriously speak of installing your “shop”.
Lol,yeah,came here to say that.
Woodworking is extremely expensive and you don’t recognise it early on. Even if you don’t have vintage tools,etc. the sunken cost fallacy will fuck you over. And we are not even talking about expensive things like CNCs, tablesaws,etc.
And wood itself is expensive. My rather mediocre wood storage was ruined by flooding recently and the damage is way beyond 2k. Just fucking wood. Not even expensive wood. Normal wood.
Is it that expensive though? My dad has a table saw for 800 bucks, wuth the table allowing to put a mill tgat he got for maybe 400 bucks. The rest around is some general tools, a quality drill and drill stand, an air filter and a self made cyclone box for the vacuum. Top it off with some self made helpers like a a sledge for the table saw. The whole ordeal is not more than 4-5k and tgere is almost nothing he cannot do by himself now.
CNC systems are hardly needed for non professionals.
There are always different levels how deep you go in,but usually you also have a router or router table (between 0,5-1k including bits), a sander (0,5k with sanding paper), the workbench (around 1-4k), etc.
5k for just the basics is very reasonable and that misses the main thing: The bloody wood. Wood has become extremely expensive over the years, especially since the war started and if you do something that keeps you occupied 8h a week it will easily 1-2k of wood and other small stuff per year.
That is then around 10k for 5y of the hobby + optimistically speaking.
I wouldn’t consider the wood as costs so easily. For instance we made furniture ourselves, like a bed, shelves, closets, stuff in the garden… If we would have bought the things instead, it would have been more expensive than the wood and other materials that went into it.
Of course the labor in this case is hobby, as it isnt competitive, but then again we got useful high quality stuff out of it, that will last a lifetime.
Depends on the furniture you buy,surely, but at least I have not been able to produce any furniture cheaper (just material costs) vs. factory build simply because they can cut more corners/get cheaper materials/can use techniques that would need more sophisticated equipment than I can.
Unless you compare it to massively and individually build carpenter furniture I always am more expensive (okay it’s usually more solid and individual, though)
Yes you’re right. The bed for instance was 300 € material costs using 27mm glued wood beech, wher you can buy stuff using plywood for cheaper. But it looks much better and will last much longer.
So in terms of quality it is somewhere in between factory and carpenter buildt. For furniture it is well worth it imo. and i couldn’t find quality stuff for less than the associated material costs. Yet you can find a lot of plywood furniture that is way to overprized because “designer” or whatever.
5k isn’t expensive to you?
Over ten years? not so much. Also if you have the space for the equipment, you usually have a middle class life.
I’m the middle of building that shop. I figure it will be done when I’m dead.
Homebrewing. If you want to brew something like IPA the cost of hops gets way higher.
Yep I did this and then ran out of time and sold the kit at a huge loss
Yeah I didn’t count homebrewing as that much expensive because I share setup with my dad.
Also join us at homebrewing@sopuli.xyz
Running. Not as expensive as a lot of the things posted about here, but my shoes cost ~$150 and I have replaced them a couple times a year. I’m planning to get in to trail running soon (as opposed to running circles in my neighborhood, so now I want to add a running vest and a GPS watch, which is not cheap.
Considering that in theory all you need to run is your body and an open space, I feel like I have spent a lot of money.
EDIT: I forgot the ~$140 bone conducting headphones I bought! I for sure feel safer with them than my old headphones though, since I have been doing almost all of my running till now on the road.
As someone who dealt with shin splints for years, a good running shoe is definitely worth it. Once I found shoes that fit my feet properly I never had to deal with them again.
Pro-tip: I highly recommend Altra Torin shoes for anyone like me, who has wide feet but narrow ankles (or as my family calls them, tennis racket feet)
I’ve actually been looking at Altra’s at the suggestion of a Youtuber I like. I should probably just bite the bullet and grab them. I have a super wide toebox and a normal width heel, so shoes are always weird for me. Up until now I’ve just stuck with New Balance, I just have to order them online because a 13 4E is hard to find in store
Shokz are sooo nice. I wear them a lot now
Agreed, I use them when I’m doing chores around the house if my wife isn’t doing stuff in the same room as me. Sound quality obviously isn’t superb but it is good enough for me and way better than I would expect.
It costs a chunk to run, but saves a lot in health bills - even in countries where healthcare is universal. Heart disease is both a killer and something that can incapacitate you, and any potential weight loss benefits aside, running is fantastic for heart health (provided you do it properly and with the approval of your medical professionals). Not to mention it also has focus, mental health, and sleep quality benefits. Plus if you really get into it, you’ll soon be training for some disturbingly long race and be too busy to do much of anything - especially shopping for pointless things you don’t need.
I’d say that most people can get started with decent wicking workout clothes (thrift them if you can and go for gaudy neons if you live in a place that’s dark most of the year), and a pair of decent running shoes on sale. Wireless headphones and a running belt (or just going for pants with zippered pockets to hold your phone) are small upgrades that also make it better if you have a bit of extra budget. Run like this for like a year, and then slowly upgrade with gadgets like running watches, CamelBak backpacks if you start doing long distances and feel like you need it. Also consider investing in slightly better clothing based on what you determine your needs are - colder climate thermals, merino, running shoes for specific pronation, and rolling tools to help you stretch.
Running can be as cheap as less than ~$100 a year or as expensive as you want it to be. It’s cheaper than the gym, CrossFit, at home workout equipment, yoga classes, etc. Not to shit on those things at all, in fact cross training helps you build strength and avoid injury. But nobody should ever feel discouraged by running due to costs, it pays off in spades.
And for new runners, run s l o w. Slower than you want. So slow you feel you’re not doing much and practically walking. Slow and long runs are the ones that make a real difference in building stamina, cardio health, and even decreasing your race times. You’re also less likely to get injured and prematurely get winded by using up all your energy in a sprint. Also, walking is fine. Even experienced runners walk during certain moments - usually for me, I’m doing it to get a burp out or something.
Health is actually half the reason I started running. I’ve lost ~50lbs over a couple years and want to lose more.
And I want to agree on SLOW. When I first started I did C25K and I was running my little 1 minute increments at like a 15 minute mile pace, then walking in between increments. But eventually I got to where I could run that 15 minute mile pace for 30 minutes at a time, and then I started working on speed. I’m down to almost being able to run a 10K in 35 minutes in a hilly environment, or being able to run for ~45 minutes at a slower pace. I tried many times in my 20s to start running and I always got discouraged because I’d try C25K, but do the running parts at a ~9 minute mile pace and it was killing me. Realizing I needed to start slow got me where I wanted to be.
As a warning to anyone reading: don’t start running to lose weight. Running burns calories and can increase your calorie maintenance, but it will also make you very hungry. Weight loss is mainly about CICO, and you can’t really outrun the fork. Since running can be very natural to humans as a form of movement, it also burns very few calories for the effort. I feel like weight training is a more fair calorie spender for the effort.
But running and taking care of myself does make me pick healthier options. Running helps me sleep, so I’m less tired and as a result, less hungry and prone to wanting unhealthy snacks. Fried greasy foods aren’t great fuel for runs, so I’ll naturally pick things like oatmeal, bananas, veggies etc. But be warned, many runners also love a post run beer so YMMV.
Disc golf.
Discs cost only $15-20 new, used ones can be only a few bucks, you only need one or a few to play, and most courses are free.
In reality, you keep buying new discs. And a bag to carry them. And more discs. And a bigger bag. Then a home basket. And a net to practice in. And more discs. Then a rack to hold the extra discs you can’t bag…. It adds up!
Houseplants.
It started with a little green in the living room and suddenly turned into a full grown, humid, highly poisonous indoor jungle that’s thirsty as fuck. And it turns out that exotic plants, fancy pots, growing lights, different types of soil for different species, fertilizers, and dozens of liters of water every day are somehow expensive…
Edit: yes, I love it
this happened to us, mostly the wife… we went from 3 Ikea cabinets full of hoyas to putting a 6x8 outdoor greenhouse IN the house. it’s insane.
Can you post pictures? That sounds cool.
