What is your "inexpensive" hobby that turned out to be expensive/ you gradually invested lots of money into?
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.
Self-hosting apps / homelab
Getting used enterprise gear is not prohibitively expensive, but the electric bills balloon very quickly.
I currently bought an old desktop from a friend that I use as my Homeserver.
Wow I thought it was way more.
One time costs: ~500€ Monthly costs: ~15€ Plus electricity, but I have solar. I assume it's about 150€/year
But I'm a cheap selfhosted, but eventually, I will have a huge ass Enterprise Level Rack in my basement.
I'm glad I quickly stopped "homelab" after my old laptop that I used as a server in a cupboard died. Switched to a rented root server for all my selfhosting needs since.
Yep. Half height rack, a couple servers, UPS, switch, etc.
And I still keep looking at used gear. Being in Silicon Valley there is always a deal to be had.
How much do you pay for electricity and how much for internet and what speeds?
Knitting. Super cheap to start, you can pick up a set of needles and some acrylic yarn for under $20. But when you start getting into nice yarns and bigger pieces, you are spending hundreds of dollars on yarn alone for a blanket or a sweater. And you want nice needles in all sizes as well as all types (double pointed, regular and circular)… more hundreds of dollars.
Moral of the story is if a friend knits you something with nice yarn, please appreciate it. Lots of effort and thought went into it.
Knitting is expensive for me because I love to start projects but I'm not great at finishing them. Good quality yarn really isn't cheap.
Weaving in the ends is the devil. I hate finishing, but I really enjoy starting 😭
I really, really love knitting. I'm not good, and I have a hard time finishing projects (tragic case of batterscain. I jump from thing to thing.), but the actual knitting itself? OMG, I love having something to do with my hands, and that something actual makes a real, tangible thing? Somehow magically out of a ball of string? What‽ It's lovely.
It's insane, though, how people who don't knit/crochet will just treat a knitted or crocheted item like it's a cheap Walmart graphic tee. They do not respect the work put into it.
Yeah. I knitted gorgeous socks and scarves in hand-dyed merino for some good friends. Come Christmas they obviously thought, oh MrsDoyle likes knitting, let's get her something knitting related! A selection of the cheapest, nastiest acrylic in hideous colours and some needles. Oooooh. Thank you so much.
Nice interrobang usage
Just started crocheting, and I'm just holding myself back from buying all the yarn, it's gonna get bad
Oh yes. Yes. I went to the Edinburgh Yarn Festival a few years back. I live nearby, but met people there who'd come from all over - Europe, Japan, the US. All three days sold out. The yarns were so beautiful! And oh so expensive. But you were there in person, fan-girling with you favourite dyers and pattern designers! Spend spend spend. The nearest cash machine ran dry. Such an expensive hobby. But I can't stop.
I’ve found my people… as I cry into this shawl project on my lap, of merino fingering yarn I paid to have imported because “you want to support small yarn producers” telling myself, “it’s not soft enough. Just throw it away and buy that cashmere/silk blend that you know feels like butter.” 🫠
Coffee.
I blame James Hoffman entirely.
Within a year I went from:
Drinking instant coffee at home, but really enjoying "proper coffee"
To
Buying a cafetiere (~£15) + preground coffee
To
Buying a Nespresso (~£60 on offer) + pods
To
Buying a budget espresso machine (~£120) + preground coffee
To
Wasting my money on a cheap manual coffee grinder (~£50) + beans
To
Immediately replacing it with an entry level Sage grinder (~£170)
To
Buying an entry Level "proper" espresso machine (~£700)
It took me a good 2-3 weeks of practicing and dialling in before pulling a good shot of coffee that I'd actually want to drink, but by that point it was also about learning a new skill, learning how different aspects of the process affect the end result and learning how to make all sorts of different espresso-based drinks.
My girlfriend thought I was nuts at first, but a year or so later even she agrees it was worth the investment. I still for the life of me can't get the hang of latte art though.
The problem is now though that I'm a waaaay more critical of coffee from coffee shops, because I spent a long time making bad coffee whilst learning!
Espresso is the line I won't let myself cross (and I don't have the counter space lol), but the $350 for the Kinu M47 was hard to swallow.
Plus side, it's also a great espresso grinder if I do ever eventually head down that road.
Similar but different : tea! You go from cheap bagged tea to going down the rabbit hole of loose leaf variations, temp control kettles, brewing vessels and brewing styles.
Time to start roasting your own coffee!
What's your " proper" espresso machine?
Not op, but ours is a Lelit Elizabeth dual boiler. Not cheap but I expect it to last like our Gaggia Espresso Deluxe did, about 15 years. I could've gotten away with a single boiler, truth be told but the ability to preinfuse (in a somewhat proper way) depends on it. Non negotiable was the PID temp control. Timed shots is nice to have.
But really I could've spent more on the grinder and less on the machine. The grinder I first got wasn't up to the task of espresso. Didn't have the range of settings and the grind quality was subpar. Had to get one a year later (grr) and settled on the Eureka Mignon Silencio. The flavor profile is so much clearer (this was obvious from the first shot I made with it) due to grind quality and it has stepless adjustment. So I can dial in the shot pretty well. Timed grind is nice too.
But damn what a lot of money for all this. Still worth it. It's not much over 10-15 y. And it pays for itself quickly. I can have an espresso drink every day that is far better than many places offer and it costs significantly less even for the super expensive, fancy beans.
I have an ECM Classika. Though when I get a house I want to replace it with a Decent :x
Sage Barista Pro. Definitely an entry level machine, but I'm very happy with it... I'm not invested enough to go for a dual boiler or higher end machine quite yet - They start to get very big and very expensive very quickly, and I have limited space.
Also would like to know the machine you went with, you're quoting GBP so same country
I can't believe I answered "board games" to this before. Yes, espresso wins it over. I just got an espresso machine for my 10th anniversary (price too high for me to be willing to admit). And here I have a wishlist of $500+ in "devices" for it.
Like you, I'm about 3 weeks in and just now getting my burr grind just right for that perfect 26s shot. Luckily my vendor was giving out a free badass scale. It keeps telling me how bad my shot is.
I still for the life of me can’t get the hang of latte art though.
Ditto. I just got my first "correct emulsified foam" today. Usually I end up with hot milk with hot whipped milk on top.
It took me a good 2-3 weeks of practicing and dialling in before pulling a good shot of coffee that I’d actually want to drink,
Could you elaborate? I'm a chef so I've helped myself to a fair few coffees from the big espresso machines and I've found it easy every time, and the coffee very potable indeed. Just haven't got the hang of foaming milk yet.
This is why I appreciate my "tea hobby". For minimal investment, you can get a lot of bang out of your buck, and it doesn't need to go as hog-wild as fancy coffee or wine or beer.
Dry loose leaf tea is just relatively cheap to be snobby over, compared to coffee and other things.
Get an electric kettle for $40-70, a $20 teapot...and you won't spend more than $100-$200 year for some tea (if you drink a LOT of it) that is head and shoulders better than ANYTHING in the grocery store.
Like, you can have a giant improvement in the quality of your tea for not too much.
You CAN go hog-wild and spend lots and lots...there are fancy expensive teas to be had...but even if you don't it's still way better than grocery store teabags.
Before diving into this hobby I was worried that I might not be able to tolerate the type of coffee that happens to be available to me at some random gas station or cafe along the way. That hasn’t been a problem for me yet, but how about you?
Having spent some time experimenting with my AeroPress, I have learned to notice some basic flavors and notes, but I wouldn’t call myself a experienced coffee taster yet. I can tell the difference between light and dark roast. Trying to tell the difference between two expensive coffees is usually very difficult for me, so I guess gettin an espresso machine might not be worth it yet.
Mechanical keyboards. The next one is my endgame, I swear. Just one more groupbuy for those keycaps. It never truly ends.
That'll only happen if you build your own boards and stuff. Not like me! I just got a simple Moonlander with some custom keycaps, dampeners, and red switches rather than my initial brown. After that, I realised that the Kinesis Advantage 360 is the way to go, so I'm fully settled now, not like everyone else ............ right?
I’ve had the Advantage360 for 6 months or so and it’s life changing when typing for 10 hours a day. Haven’t gotten around to relearning on Dvorak or Colmak layout as I learnt qwerty on the 360 first.
And then it turns out some horrendously ugly piece of plastic (like the Kinesis Advantage 360) is better for actually using.
My first "good" keyboard is my current one, which is a Ducky One 2 Mini with MX Cherry Browns I bought really cheap 2nd hand. It has been almost 2 years I've been using it and I recently got a coiled cable for it. I was cleaning it the last time and I started to wonder how hard it would be if I wanted to change my switches and fell into a hole where now I want to desolder everything and install sockets. My spouse got lubs for his stabilizers (he has a Filco Majestouch 2 Ninja with MX Cherry Blues) after watching a few videos... We just started diving into this deeper and deeper after using keyboards from the time cherry still had the patent up for so long. Yeah, we are screwed.
thats what I thought when I built my quefrency, then rev 5 came out, then now rev 6 is coming out, now I have my first proto* one I built lying around, and I have a rev 4 at home and a rev 5 at the office for work, need to figure out how Im going to get that rev 6, each one I build better than the last even though I thought my second one was going to be my end game haha
Ditto on that. Thought I was content with my first ergo but one thing after another led to an artisan keyboard with CNC backplates and plates, 2 year long group buys, and artisans to match the whole theme that costs the same as the keyboard. At this point I'm so far in the hole that my artisan keycap collection cost more than my keyboard collection.
It's just another one of those hobbies that has many moving parts so you can optimize and personalize each part.
One IBM Model M that I got for free and I'm set for life.
mechanical keyboards go two ways, you start shelling out for way overpriced cncd metal or wacky boards or you become a pcb designer and make a board that could be used for camping
I never got the appeal of mechanical keyboards. If you actually have to type all day, a proper flat keyboard like in the old MacBooks ('09-ish) is way nicer and costs much less.
That's extremely subjective. I definitely don't feel like flat keyboards are nicer. These days I use a split keyboard with an angle and I will never go back.
Your experience is not universal. I type all day and if a client/employer gave me one of those flat keyboards I would quickly quit and go dig ditches instead.
If you actually have to type all day, you get into ergonomic mechanical keyboards 😎
I have a laptop (HP Elitebook G6) as a workstation at work which I use to type reports on site and a varmilo with linear switches in the office.
At home I have a GMMK Pro with Kailh Box white switches.
I can type on my laptop but I still prefer my GMMK pro over it thrice and I enjoy my varmilo in the office because of the numpad. Else I'd bring my GMMK pro there (with quieter switches).
In the end: This hobby is very personal and one may like linear while another likes clicky and in the end both spend 500€ on hardware but all do one thing: They enjoy what they type on :)
Growing cannabis (legal here in Canada)
…anyone can grow weed. Growing GOOD weed is an art.
I unintentionally grow weed because I made some tincture for grandma.
Now it just grows on my garden and I can't get rid of it.
In Germany we will be allowed to grow some for private use come next year. I have no idea what to get yet, but I will just plant it in a planter in the garden and hope that it works I guess :D
Thats growing weed.
I hope you’ll be able to get seeds and strains imported from the US and Canada. I smoked weed in Germany while I was living there in 2015 a few times and it was the worst weed I’ve ever smoked. It tasted weird, smelled bad, and didn’t even get me high. When I asked someone about it they were just like “weed isn’t as strong here as it is in the U.S.”
2000 into my fully automated hydroponic weed factory. Another 500 to make my nutrient solutions from scratch. Mind you that 500 dollars when making from scratch likely last 20 years of crops. It does make a good 1.5 pounds of dry weed every 3 to 4 months with the for legal plants allowed in Canada. I barely smoke so give nearly all away.
Three year prior, harvested a crop down right before going to Mexico for three month trip. Was still some shoots barely growing so for shits and giggles I turn the lights back to 22 hours per day to see if they would go back to the veg state. Have camera so can watch it remotely. Shit starts fully growing like a new plant. Anyhow COVID puts a wrinkle in my return. Ended up in Mexico for 18 months. Over that time, thing kept growing like nuts. Automation on water replacement and nutrient injection along with pH monitoring. Became sort of a how long can this thing go with near zero human intervention. Had only to send my brother in law in three times to cut it down and refill my nutrient injectors from solutions I made before leaving.
Right? When you grow, you really get an appreciation for what an amazing, and resilient plant it is.
I used to grow, but never smoked except to taste my harvest. My spouse smoked daily and heavily. I didn’t, but I LOVED coming home from work to my grow room. It was so therapeutic! Still is, but I miss my old HPS & MH lights.
Running.
Was supposed to be the cheapest way to get exercise. You can do it right from your front door, no gym subscriptions, no specialized equipment (some people will tell you you don't even need shoes), and it's far and away the best time-value exercise I've ever found. You can get away with like 20 minutes 3-4 times a week and be doing great.
Well, turns out I love running and I love distance running so I'm now putting up enough miles to need new shoes 2-3 times a year, a nice Garmin smart watch and heart rate monitor to track my progress, sign-ups for several long-distance races each year, shorts, socks, you get the picture.
Could I do it cheaper? Yeah. But at the end of the day it's a hobby and I like it
I bought myself a raspberry pi for my birthday a few years ago.
I now have thousands of dollars in hardware sitting in a server rack in my office. Whoops.
This is not the first post where I feel it but I love it so much that we have a lot of people on Lemmy that can talk about things not related to computers!
For me it is maybe camping.
I just tested my new sleeping bag - under 0.5kg rated to -5°C. And realised that I bought/ replaced lots of gear to higher quality gear over few years.
Camp stoves and fuel! I can buy a lot of bic lighters and cheap metal camping mugs for the cost of a dang Jetboil stove and fuel.
I love my pocket rocket, nothing like getting up early in the morning and boiling some water super quick for some coffee, then heat some more water for some quick oatmeal and sit in my chair and just decompress
When I can I just make fire. I have some camping stove, really cheap one, but I use it maybe 2 times per year.
The cheap one I have is for ethanol/ urotropin tablets.
Ok now you have to share. A decent bag at a half kilo?
It is some feather filled bag (300g). But it is not durable, the fabric that holds it is really thin.
I just picked what my older brother got (but with more filling).
At 5°C it is still in the boxers range inside. The e-shop I bought it from had some details about the sleeping bags like quality of feathers and filling quantity. This one had 900 in quality and 300g of filling.
Oh my! I spent so much on camping! I get so excited by all the gadgets that people come up with.
trying to get a motocamping setup going. Spent over $200 at REI last weekend just for a tarp shelter and accoutrements and I still have 75% of the list to go which is only NECESSARY items…
Board games. Things get expensive once you start collecting
Coffee. I'm in a coffee producing country. It could be as cheap as grabbing a bag from the coffee institute (really good and cheap), a cloth filter and call it a day. Instead, I'm on my second espresso machine, fourth grinder, second portafilter set, and have all the doodads to make it just how I like it.
I needed a new saucepan.
I've now replaced half my kitchen.
Fountain pens - I started with a 30 euro Parker but it seems like just one is never enough.
Truth. I started with some disposable Pilot Varsity fountain pens because someone I worked with was forging my signature on paperwork. I haven't worked there for 12 years, and now I have a collection of different fountain pens and ink.
Started with a $50 aluminum Lamy, now I have a brass Kaweco that was about $220. I have a shelf full of inks now.
Help me….
Oh shit that’s like 3 hobbies in this one thread. I stopped at a (very) decent Lamy 2000 and Iroshizuku inks.
This. At first you're like "oh geez, $20 for a pen?" Then it's "oh, I absolutely need to spend $400 for a custom handmade Edison or (insert your favorite brand)" sure it writes a little better than the $20 pen, but holy schnikes does it look and feel so much better.
One is never enough. I mean, you gotta have one for each ink, right? RIGHT??
There are so many options to try to see what you like. Plus, the fountain pen community is honestly one of the best. Dangerous for the wallet...
Yeah. I had to start pinching myself when I began to look at a $400 pen as a “bargain”. Still love my fountain pens, though.
Scrolled down for this, hi all!
Reading. Bear with me…you start by getting a cheap physical or digital copy of the book. Then you fall in love with the book/author. Then you have to buy all the books by that author…but not the cheap editions…the fancy editions! You need to display these babies! And oh! They sell cool collectors items that would be perfect for the book shelf! Rinse and repeat for so…so many books. Sigh.
3d printing. I started out with a cheapish Chinese model, got annoyed by the lack of accuracy and bought a Prusa.
Then there’s the filaments, accessories, post processing stuff... I own a Dremel now for some reason!
And I’m constantly eyeing those resin 3d printers, telling myself the higher resolution is totally worth it…
The only thing saving my bank account is my low attention span and dozens of other interests :)
I feel you, started with a cheap 200$ ender 3…. I now have two ender 3’s, an ideaformer belt printer, a bambu p1s, and. Tronxy 400 I’m converting into a Frankenstein printer. Oh and an anycubic mono x resin printer and a laser cutter.
Yea, 6 printers and a freaking laser cutter/engraver. All because I thought it would be fun to tinker with 3D printing
It can also save money. I love just printing things I need rather than buying them! Even if I have to do some test fits, I can easily beat off-the-shelf prices with some meters of PLA.
Happy with my Prussia mini, but starting to feel the post-processing itch.
So I'm just gonna quickly add in on the resin printers.
Even a dirt cheap used anycubic model from years ago is going to be much more impressive and fantastic resolution than a standard FDM printer.
But the build plate is really small and the resin is super toxic. You will need to get something to wash the prints in and a constant supply of high proof alcohol that if you want to save money you need tools to filter as well. Then you should get UV lights for curing or you will have to wait days to harden naturally.
It's not nearly as expensive as you would think if you buy used and fanagle parts and pieces of stuff from weird sources but it's smelly, messy and more of a pain unless you really need super clean but small parts or minis.
I know I know I know...
Every time I feel the temptation, I think about the mess and chemicals and rubber gloves (that last one always does it for me somehow).
I don't have the space for it, nor the ventilation. It's just.. I like to design stuff and print it. And whenever my printer can't match my design, I get annoyed and blame it on my tools. Even though I know I should adjust my design instead.
Sorry, I'm ranting..
3D printing turned into building printers. Im 2 Vorons deep, and the annex k3 is starting to look interesting. Machine in general. I know I have no Real use for a co2 laser, but damn does it look interesting.
So I gues building machines.
Lol same here.
Bought a cheap printer and it worked, but I couldn't fix it.
Then I got another cheap printer that was bigger, but it was a fire hazard
Then I got a not as cheap printer, then it broke in the stupidest way possible
So I got a the Popular Cheap Printer, and it was good enough
But I needed a Prusa since I was now selling my parts, and it was good
Then I got a bigger prusa since the popular printer turned into a sunk cost fallacy.
What should've been a one time cost of $350 turned into multiple $350-500 printers until I started a business with it and spent $1000 to stop messing with it
Gardening.
Containers are surprisingly expensive. And you need a lot of soil to fill them, which gets expensive too. Then it's impossible to only buy the seeds you need, when there are so many cool varieties...
I have autism and ADHD, so all of them:
That's only my 30's which is the last 4 years. Hobbies for me are normally short and fierce obsessions when I start, they eventually slow down into a more 'normal' pasttime that I do sometimes to past the time.
Bicycling for me. Started off with a cheap old bike that I tried keeping in as goid condition as possible without spending too much on it. Problem with old bikes is wear and tear so things break and new old parts are hard to cheaply. So it became a hackjob. Then got me a new one and realised riding on roads only got boring so I started experimenting with gravel and singletrack.
Guess what? Time for a new bike. And a more expensive one. Carbon. And to maintain it I needed more tools. Also new tubes as the spare ones I had didn't fit that big of tyres. Also moved to a new place and now I got a MTB arena within a few km from home. So of course I had to get me one of those. And to maintain the suspension I needed new stuff, oils and tools.
Clothing. Bags. Events. It becomes a lot after a while.
Also planning for bike nr4, a steel fatbike. Promised myself not to buy anything this year, but the year is soon over...
Did I mention bikepacking? Yeah that is another big black hole of expenses. But a fair bit of overlap with backpacking so costs are split.
Motorcycle riding, done the right way.
Bought a decent street bike to start on, learn the ropes for several years, had the occasional mishhap or two which I fixed by myself. Still, cost money to fix things right?
Upgraded to a proper sport bike and realized how much fun it is, also with a new level of danger involved. Still, I wasn't an idiot into things right. Bought 100% proper gear, including a track suit, good helmet, gloves, etc. as any motorcyclist knows, you'll eventually drop your bike, which I did. Again, fixing it yourself is certainly an option, but also again, it cost money.
Then, I made the mistake of going to my first track day. They will allow you to use your own motorcycle as long as you prep it correctly and have decent tires and safety gear. This was an absolute game changer, and I was hooked harder than a heroin addict with an unlimited bank account. Unfortunately, I am neither of those two categories, and track days only get more expensive the deeper you get into them. First of all, they are not cheap to begin with. A decent track day will set you back 300 to $500 just to get on the track. Then, to really get the most out of it, you should have true racing tires with tire warmers. Then there's the matter of getting your bike to the track, race fuel, a place to hang out, etc etc etc. The list goes on and on.
Photography.
I started to really get into it back in 2015 with a Sony A6000 and a kit lens. Then you buy more, higher quality lenses. Then you buy better camera bodies with full frame sensor, then lenses that are full frame compatible. Then the various odds and end accessories. Then trips around the world to take pictures of things.
I have taken a break from photography recently, on account that having a kid doesn't allow me a lot of opportunity to edit my photos anymore. They say the best camera you have is the one that is on you. That has proven to be true while I try to be as present as possible around my daughter. I can quickly take out my phone, capture the moment and it will take care of most of the post processing edits that I can share with family later.
Tabletop RPG. I started in High school, you need only paper a pen and a set of dice, right ? All the rules can be found online anyway, right ?
But it's so much better to have the physical books. And you need more than one dice of each obviously. And this nice metal dice looks very good. I obviously need different set of dice with colors pattern that match my different characters.
Speaking of characters, I need mini. I could get the cheap basic one of course, but the lead ones looks sooo much better.
And I obviously need custom models for all my characters.
Several years later, with a disposable income and I added maps, tokens, terrains, cards, ect. Even a tablet that I use only for this. I'm now limited by the storage place available in my flat (maybe for my own good).
Watercolor.
Children play with $5 palettes. Apparently I pay $20 for a single color tube.
Farming - family has been doing it for ~5 generations. I'd say we have put in about $10 M dollars over time (adjusted for inflation).
What's that dear? It's a way of life/occupation . . . are you sure? Seems like it must be a hobby given the return we've made on it over the years. Well, if you're sure.
My wife said that farming is technically an occupation and not a hobby. I still have my doubts given how much we have thrown away on it over the years, but I don't like to disagree with her (she's usually right).
Playing music. Started on a shitty hand-me-down acoustic guitar. Got a better guitar. Got an electric. Got a better amp. Got a couple of pedals. Got a better amp. Got like 6 more amps, some cabs, 5 more guitars, a huge pedalboard, a cello, a keyboard, an audio interface, attenuators, mics, etc etc.
You gotta understand... I need all this stuff. There are subtle differences that you've never noticed before but will probably hear once I do an a/b comparison for you, and I absolutely must get an AC15 next to round out the collection instead of buckling down and recording something.
Mechanical pencils. You can go from $6 Kuru Toga Advances to $60 rOtring 800s to $100+ imported Japan region exclusive Kuru Toga Dives
Making pizzas.
3 months, $200 of equipment and expensive ingredients and a day's work per pizza later and I can confirm it is 100% worth it.
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
Cycling.
You can certainly do it on an 300€ bike, but who would want that if you can pay 300€ for the helmet alone.
Flight simming. Started out with a cheap joystick. Now I have an expensive one, throttle quadrants, rudder pedals, a vr headset and I've built myself a button box and a flight seat. And I'm now I want a helicopter collective. Oh well..
lol at some point is is cheaper to take flying lessons?
At $250+/hr for flight lessons, no.
On the contrary, it's probably cheaper to build your own sim today than waste xx flying lessons on procedures you can learn in a sim.
And you didn’t even get into the software.
Aircraft, scenery, support software like Navigraph, it all adds up. Fortunately aircraft and scenery are “buy it for life” and anyone who tries otherwise is liable to have rocks thrown at them.
VATSIM is free however, and that’s part of why it’s so great.
I am probably too late to this... But here goes.
Every damn time I get into something, I over do it.
I spent $13k on my kitchen stove, this one keeps giving, but that is $13,000.00 USD! Just for my kitchen stove. My range hood because it is required with my high output stove was $3k, and then let's talk makeup air to replace what is taken out by it.
Or what about woodworking? Yep, I wanted to do it, and still do. I have a half completed work bench, and some basic tools... That will be about $2k...
Let's buy a boat! Yep 29 years old, runs great... Break out another thousand...
But most recently, Plex... You know, let's get rid of subscriptions... Yeah, this year alone I have put $900 or so into that. Yep I sure saved money on canceling Netflix!
Selfhosting media
PLANTS, LOTS OF THEM
Mechanical keyboards. Picked up a keychron for cheap. Decided it was too loud, decided to change the switches. Then the keycaps. Now I'm ordering barebones keyboards and artisan custom keycaps. This shit is an addiction.
selfhosting/homelab. Originally started just using retired gaming PC parts to build a server. All it cost was the power to run the system. Years later and with more things/content I have, I just added a 5x 18tb hard drives and 3x 8tb. Just the 5 18tb drives was like $1500.
Sex toys. My collection is worth more than my car.
My grandma got me 3 ducklings in 2019 for no reason. 3 ducks don't cost very much. The issue is, that she unlocked a passion. I now have 12 ducks. I want more, but I don't have the money or space.
Arduino and hobby electronics. It started out as a continuous loop pad dye machine to save me having to dye fabric by hand, strictly mechanical, but then I wanted to automate adding the chemicals at the right times. Then it was keeping the dye liquor a consistent temperature. Then it was draining the trough automatically. Then I figured out I could design my own PCBs and have them fabricated. It just keeps going...
Solving the Rubik's cube
You either get into speedcubing and get high end cubes to improve your performance, at least of the official categories and a couple must haves like the Mirror cube.
And / Or
You start collecting cubes and puzzles of all kinds and shapes (yes, even non-cubical :o). You start to acquire custom cubes built by hand by artesians or niche brands.
For the love of what's good in this world, stick to that one budget MJC set of competitive cubes until you are actually 10 or 20 seconds behind the world record
Magic the Gathering..
Few years ago we found few old decks in our summer camp shared game box.
Someone looked at them said something like I think we could sell them for few hundred bucks and then put the rubber band on and tossed them back.
I started playing MTG when ice age came out. Sold all my cards back in 2018 for $13k. Most of that was from having all the dual lands and fetch lands. Also had an original foil tarmagoyf
Who ever told you it would be inexpensive?? LOL
In defense of the ~8 year old me, who had no clue how to play the game and just liked looking at the fancy cards, no one told me anything :) Also, that was around the time Urza's Saga released so it really was wayyy less expensive at that time.
Man, if I knew then what I know now..
When I first got into VRChat to hang out with some friends, I thought maybe I could survive just playing on desktop for free. Now, a couple thousand dollars later, I own a Valve Index, extra base stations and 4 trackers for full-body tracking.
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".
House plants. Sure a few mass-market plants are dirt cheap, but soon you get into unusual plants, plants with special needs, hundreds/thousands of plants, grow lights, grow racks, terrariums, automated watering systems…
Music production. You start with pirated FL Studio and sone freeware plugins and the next thing you know is you're planing your hone studio with room treatment, expensive monitors, an expensive interface, aonther evrn more expensive interface, that one vintage compressor you absolutely need, a tape machine, and then you want I synthesizer, just a small, versaitle one, and next thing you know is you're buying the second euro rack for your mod synth because there wasn't enough space in the first one, because you need that one filter, and since you got lots of free slots now, why not buy some more fx. Fx can't hurt, right? And maybe one oscillator, you always wanted a fifth one...
Data hoarding and self-hosting every service under the sun.
Espresso.
It started with a second hand cheap machine from my grandmother as a gift for Christmas.
Then I bought a delonghi grinder for £50 and a used delonghi dedica for £60.
Then I upgraded the grinder to a baratza sette for £300.
Then I upgraded the espresso machine to a Lelit Bianca for £2000
Then I bought an EG-1 grinder for £3000
Now I'm looking to upgrade my machine soon.
Also I bought acaia scales and a puqpress and various coffee related things along the way, as well as spending essentially £10 a week on beans
Magic the Gathering
Traditional painting and illustration! While I now know that I never needed to spend more than $250 for professional-grade tools, I've spent about $18,000. As for sales in 3.5 years, they don't account for more than $800. For that I mostly blame Instagram where it's not possible to grow anymore organically and get an audience & potential customers. So I moved to the federated open source PixelFed now, if anyone's interested in my book-style illustration: https://pixelfed.social/EugeniaLoli
Also, as a word of advice for anyone who wants to also do illustration and don't want to do the same mistakes that I did. All you need is:
I included various mediums above in white color because highlights are king in illustration, and each provides a different look and feel, depending on the painting. Happy painting!
For me, it's board games. I figured a few good board games could last a while. I'm sure you are (incorrectly) guessing the next step, that I just bought too many.
No, I bought Kingdom Death: Monster. And now I want the expansion packs, which combine to nearly $3000.
Getting fed up strimming our 4 acre, very steep field.
I looked at remote control mowers. At the time they were all well over £6k, so I thought I'd try building one. Well, I've done it and it works well, but it's taken three years and cost over a grand so far in parts.
Homelab (running home servers). Especially since I'm in Canada so I pay out the ass for shipping. Got into it purely out of interest for server administration, programming (computer science in general really) and the desire to experiment on my own hardware, but I'll have you know I have a total of 48 processing cores and 30 TB of storage running my personal fileserver and "private cloud!" Though not relying on the likes of Google for data storage and "cloud" services is a massive genuine benefit!
I also run BOINC and Folding@Home on the excess computing power in the winter, essentially "donating" it to science, which is perfect because my house only has electric baseboard heating anyway so I'm consuming the same amount of electricity for heating either way, and the electricity sources are mostly renewables where I live! The home office is toasty all winter, if kind of loud.
Surprised there’s no reef tank people here. Imagine spending $5000 on a 20 gallon fish tank - BEFORE spending any money on corals.
Ya it CAN be done for $50, but nobody does that.
Playing racing games on PC.
At first, it's just a few racing games with an Xbox controller.
Then it get more complicated with the more advanced racing sim/arcade and the controller isn't enough anymore.
Then come a simple wheel and pedals set.
But now the games is way more enjoyable, then up the difficulty.
Now I need gear shifter, hand brake, better monitor, better PC.
Then not long until I need a full racing cockpit to mount everything on.
And now, after all that is just the beginning.
Reloading.
I thought, I can buy a Hornady press, use range brass, and same some cash!
And, well, kind of. But mostly no. Yes, buying primers, bullets, and powder, and using range brass is indeed cheaper than buying boxes or cases of ammunition on a per bullet basis. Sure, a set of dies can get expensive ($200+ for match-grade dies if you do, e.g. long range shooting competitions). Oh, and you need to clean your brass, preferably in a wet tumbler, and then dry your brass, and also get a trim station to trim to length, and possibly a primer pocket swager if you've picked up military brass with crimped primer pockets... And a scale, you gotta have a good scale so that you know exactly how much powder you're using (seriously; you need a good scale, you cannot skip this), and you need a chronography to measure speeds to develop the most accurate loads...
...And then you start getting into progressive reloading presses that are intended for really high volume shooting that start at around $2000, and top out at around $10k, plus things like annealing stations so that your neck tension is always consistent after you've crimped the case, and powder tricklers for when volumetric powder dispensers aren't accurate enough...
But the real expense hits when you're shooting 10x as much because now ammunition is "cheap".
BRB, gonna spend $400 on 8# of Varget powder and $300 on 1000 Hornady ELD-M .224 bullets.
Making electronic music. You can get lots of software tools for free, so I started out with those.
Then I realized how many details get lost, depending on what speaker/headphones you use, so bought myself higher quality headphones. As in, quite high-end for normies, but obviously, I'm at the lower end for music production hardware.
Now I'm considering buying a MIDI keyboard, because those software tools don't quite emulate proper piano playing. Although, you could obviously also spend money on getting different software tools. And of course, on a quadrillion plugins for these software tools, to produce different sounds.
I'm just glad that my other hobby is programming, so when my music-self gets excited about an idea, my programming-self will want to solve it.
...and then never finish what music-self wanted, but at least we're distracted from spending money.
Smoking cigars was a huge money suck, back when I used to smoke.
Other than that and video games, it's got to be art and writing supplies. Probably over $1000 if I add it all up over the years.
Which actually isn't that bad considering how much I enjoy writing and drawing, so I guess that's something to be happy about
Tinkering with electronics. Like, breadboards, integrated circuits, transistors, microcontrollers.
I've got a tacklebox full to bursting with components and parts worth probably close to a grand.
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 books downloaded 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.
I’m not sure it can get worse than bird watching. Completely free to start. Then you are like “man I wish I could see that bird over there” so you buy some binoculars. Then you think “dang this bird is moving too fast I still can’t identify it, maybe I should try photographing it”. Two months later you’ve spent 10k because bird photography is apparently the most intense kind of photography. Turns out photographing very tiny things that move very fast from very far away is very difficult and the lenses you need start at thousands of dollars and go up to tens of thousands of dollars. That isn’t including the camera body, which you probably want very fast autofocus on, along with bird eye tracking, which hardly comes on any cameras at all.
Yeah…
3D modelling. It's impossible to get into 3D modelling and not get eventually sucked into 3D Printing... Which as other people have explained on the thread, is it's own money sinker.
Literally any hobby I have seriously messed with.
Although- racecars was never cheap.
My homelab started off pretty cheap. But, at this point, I am quite certain I have a few thousand bucks worth of hardware. Shit- I have two thousand bucks in just HDDs, SSDs/NVMes...
3d printing.
Started out with a cheap printer, mostly to supply my friends with miniatures and terrain. They loved the stuff I printed for them, so gave me money for my effort, which went into upgrading my printer and buying more supplies and buying a new printer so I could print better, bigger things for them.
Then, so enamored by what 3d printing could do, they bought their own 3d printers.
and now no one talks to me cause I no longer have any use and i'm stuck with a printer I havent even removed from the box and assembled for 3 years, and another printer that only stays around because every 2-3 months something comes up where I can design and print a part to fix something around the house.
Started out with a raspberry pi several years ago. Got my feet wet with entry level, beginner friendly NAS prebuilds. Hunted for recycled computer parts. Now searching for and actively acquiring enterprise gear that is making a massive dent in my wallet.
My humble used office desktop turned NAS quickly became a dual-processor, 64GB ECC machine with more storage and processing power than I'll probably ever need.
Pc gaming. I started off with a refurbished HP omen, but now I'm wanting something more. I'm aiming for a custom built and that has led me to the discovery of companies like Digital Storm, System 76, and Falcon Northwest.
Torrenting and data hoarding are also hobbies of mine. Every so often I'll buy an external hard drive once I max out the storage on a current one. One hard drive failed a while back and now I'm looking for data recovery companies, but their services are a bit pricey.
I think audio, headphones, amps, all this stuff. Microphones, recorders, physical mixing gear. If I would go in that direction, I would need a seperate room and loots of money
Music production. Started with a old pc and a pirated version of ableton. Now I bought my first top tier laptop and a license of ableton… and oh whats that around the corner? Is that a modular synth?
Probably gardening.
A few seed packets and some dirt turns into building nice cedar raised gardens, filling them all with great quality soil, expensive liquid fertilizers, various irrigation systems, and so on. And I can't just haul all that dirt in my sedan... But hey, I have 20+ tomato plants, and about as many different pepper plants every year.
It's honestly nowheer near as expensive as some of my other hobbies, but on the "a lot more money than I expected" scale it's up there.
Vinyl records... 25 years ago you could hardly buy them . I listen to punk and they never gave up on the format and so it was cheap and collectible because print runs were small.. from 2010 onwards, they came back in fashion and the major labels started clogging up the pressing plants and then pre-orders became a thing and the price started creeping up...now, in my country a vinyl that used to be $20 is now pushing $55 and mainstream artists are pushing $70 ...my desire has really waned.. I'm priced out of finding new artists because I can't buy everything all the time like I used to.
Amongst all my hobbies (am kind of a serial hobbyist…) I think fishing is the one that turns out the most expensive compared to my initial assumption.
Started with trout fishing into fly fishing the lure then carp… daaamn now I’m looking into a bassboat or a kayak…
Wait until you get a fishing buddy, and you start gifting him tackle. Then a few days later you realize that hey you miss that rod you had, so you decide to buy another, but now they're like an extra $100 then they used to be. So you pick up ot at work but now your whole week is thrown off, and you can't find the motivation to go down to bass pro, buy a rod, reel, and line and tackle because you've worked 70 hours this week, and you figure it'll be best to wait until next week to do it.
Next week rolls around but car registration is due and you decide to use your hobby budget instead break into your savings. Now you're back where you started. To make matters worse the guy you gifted the rod to isn't into fishing anymore.
Knitting. Only handdyed yarns, which are costly. And of course you need ALL colours. And only the most luscious fibres and yarns.
I've resorted to dyeing yarn myself - which opened up another deep, deep rabbit hole.
And a business.
I started music when I was like 7/8, my parents encouraged me to do so. And here we are, 20 years later, my dad told me cocaine would’ve probably been way cheaper.
Film photography. Started with a camera I got for free, and $20 worth of film. Quickly spiraled into many cameras that I bought or inherited, and so much money on film and development
It’s a toss up between cooking and home networking for me.
Cooking because it started off as just finding neat recipes and giving them a shot to now experimenting with new techniques and harder to procure ingredients. My pantry looks like a mini spice market and keeping them fresh is its own hassle. Plus needing all the gear gets expensive!
I also got really into home networking during the start of the pandemic. I went from having a simple off the shelf mesh network to a full network rack in my basement serving some high end access points and cat6 drops in every room. Now I have a pretty secure iot stack that’s separate from my main vlan and one devoted to my work computer.
Arma 3. I updated my router, computer and bought the dlcs so I could run a server.
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.
Gaming. It used to be an MMO for like $15 a month. Now it's a new game for $70, the game has DLC for $20-$30 or skins or some battle pass.
Have you tried playing table tennis? It starts tame, but as soon as you get a bit competitive and learn about custom rackets...
I just drained my bank account last weekend for a new racket and box, a few new balls,...
Probs low hanging fruit for this thread, but vinyl collecting.
Started around 2011 by going to charity shops and second hand stores to find bargains. I used to be able to spend £10 a week and get 3/4 new (to me) records. Some were great ,some were trash, but that was the fun!
Then I started getting specific records, building towards band discographies... next thing I know, I'm dropping £25 per record for two bootleg records that were definitely not worth the price. Was a watershed moment and one that made me take a step back.
Ticked over for a year or two, next thing I know vinyl records are now in Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury's. Every new release comes on vinyl, and they're now £25+. Charity shops are now just full of junk vinyl, and all the second hand stores now charge £25+ because their pressings are "original"... all the fun is now gone.
I had a recipe blog prior to the pandemic. I put well over five grand into it over four years and didn't make a cent.
If I hadn't decided that I hate website with ads and third party cookies on them I probably could have made a few bucks during the pandemic.
Flight-simming. I started with a cheap joystick. Now my desk is littered with touch-screens, custom controllers etc.
No other ham radio nerds here besides me? It always starts with a $35 Baofeng hand-held...
I've had amazing luck with hobbys that should be expensive, but weren't.
Me & some friends have a small computer museum. We collect minicomputers & workstations. (Stuff used in science & academia.) We have computers dating back to the early 60s. But we started in the mid 90s, when NO ONE was interested. So we got everything for free. (Well... for the cost of renting large trucks.)
I'm a photographer. My DSLR is old, from just when DSLR's were getting "good enough" at a reasonable price. I bought it used when it was already "obsolete". And then someone gave me an exotic industrial camera they had at work which was "broken". It was too broken for industrial use, but works fine for studio use. I had to build some hardware & write all the software to use it, but... the results are fantastic. It blows away my DSLR. (But uses the same lenses!)
My library has probably cost a lot, but that's spread out over 40 years, so I don't notice it. (Also, I worked in a used bookstore for a bit, and that's a good way to get a lot of books CHEEEEEEEAP. Employee discount? Yes. Discount on books in the back that are slightly damaged and unsellable? YES.) And I've occasionally sold a rare book, so that offsets things.
Etc.
(Note: my home computer collection spans ten full-height racks. A few of those are on loan from the museum, but most are mine. Spent close to nothing on that. Somehow.)
Lego , need I say more?
Oh boy, where do I even start. I guess we should first have a minute of silence for my wallet...
Amateur Radio, Data Hoarding, Pc Gaming, and my car.
Any art medium that requires canvases. A small one at WalMart is no problem, but as you move to larger works and need better canvas material it gets expensive fast.
Oh! And Arduino programming. A simple kit to get going isn't too bad. Then you're trolling Adafruit for parts, then you go big and start importing from China directly. Now you're building a garage addition for the electronics lab... Or is that just me? At least it's also able house my first motorcycle... First...
Music production. And IT in general.
But specifically the music production; started off as "I'll by FL Studio and muck around with it" to "I need ALL THE VSTs!". I've sunk like $2500 into it in the last two months (which is a hell of a lot of money to me), and I keep buying shit for it.
Am I any good at it? Fuck no. But it's not stopping me from keeping at it and buying shit I probably don't need :P
And the IT stuff consists of rack-mount servers and Pi's. I've sunk around $25k into it all over the last 12 years.
Homebrewing. I have made many a beer over 8 or 9 years. They get better with each batch, but along with it is another new piece of equipment to make the process easier or more efficient.
Homebrewing. If you want to brew something like IPA the cost of hops gets way higher.
Audio equipment. Started as someone who collected a bunch of budget king IEMs and have been slowly creeping my way up in cost ;-;
Getting back into PC gaming after buying my friends old 300 euro gaming PC. I'm looking to upgrade and every little bit faster is only a little bit extra, so a 100 euro upgrade turned to a 120 euro upgrade, then a 150 euro upgrade to... i don't want to say how much i spent...
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
Tabletop Roleplaying Games.
I bought Mutant Year Zero in 2015 thinking "Ah, this will give me countless hours of play! I can make my own adventures and stuff!"
Now, my shelf is buckling after trying a hundred different games and supplements, and getting addicted to pretty books.
Currently, my favorite game of all time is Delta Green. Investigative horror mystery. Amazingly horrific scenarios (adventures) with True Detective season one level of masterful writing.
Check out Glass Cannon Podcast playing it on Spotify if you want!
Dog training/sports.
Here I am thinking "I need to get more active and it'll be fun to do stuff with my best bud Link" (Link is a 4 year old golden retriever)
Starts with basic training obedience classes, no biggy. Then they offer Rally classes, which is basically obedience plus some fun stuff, cool, I'll take that class. Oh, I can get a cool title for him? Sure, we already trained him, why not! Ok he needs 3 successful runs, and each run attempt is $25...? k...
Rally Novice acquired...fun but... Was that really worth 150 for the class + $75 for the three runs? ...sure whatever
Ooooo agility sounds fun! Let's do that! $150 for a 6 week session, that's not bad! 6 months and many sessions later + buying practice equipment... I'm officially poor. My dog is a happy boy, and I'm more active, but FML this is a rabbit hole lol
We're having a lot of fun, and my dog is a happier more obedient boy, but man was I not expecting the crazy expense. Those people with the dogs that have a bazillion titles and letters after their names? They've spent a literal fortune on that dog. It's absolutely mind boggling.
I bought a vinyl copy of Beggars' Banquet by the Rolling Stones for 50p despite not having a record player. Fast forward six years and I now have a full stereo system, a collection worth over £10k and regularly order limited edition albums from small bands costing me large amounts each time. Send help.
Cycling. I started with a bike that was given to me by my uncle. Now I have a road bike, full equipment x3, a direct drive trainer for the rainy days and a subscription to use that.
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)
So I found a weekly planner online and I bought it telling myself that it was expensive, but it would be enough for a year and I wouldn't need anything else.
The planner has been great, by the way. Yet, when it arrived, I liked it so much that I had this classic feeling of not wanting to ruin it with my handwriting. I needed a good mechanical pencil! Erasable, yet stylized.
Then I thought the pages looked clean, but monotone. Stickers! What about my own creations? Thermal printer with sticker rolls! And so on and so on.
I am productive ...and addicted to stationery items.
Art.
Gave up on buying and maintaining copics and just bought CSP. May have to switch to Krita at some point, but digital art is far more accessible than other mediums. Want a marker texture? The brushes for that are free, only real barrier is a graphics tabler.
Only because no one has said it yet, headphones. You can get a really great set of headphones for $200 or so, but if you want it to sound a little better you're looking at $500-$700. But music can sound a bit better if you get better equipment for around $1200. Then you hear a $2000 set-up, and you chase that, until you hear a $5000 kit. And it just keeps going.
I started getting invested in a TCG (Digimon) for the first time ever a couple months ago (magic, YGO, pokemon etc. never did it for me before).
One of the selling points (at least currently) is that most decks are fairly affordable (less than 50 bucks affordable) and viable and even the very competitive decks shouldn't set you back much (with less than 100 bucks you can easily make a top tier tournament-viable deck) .
Problem is I really started digging lots of different decks and discovering new favorite digimon and how they play and now I'm several hundreds of dollars of investment in both in cards and accessories (not even counting merch...).
I regret nothing though. It has helped me get out of the house (I work remote) and interact with people which has been very good for my mental health, and it gave me a way to revive some of my childhood nostalgia.
My wife and I started playing Disc Golf as an "inexpensive" and more accessible option to traditional golf with a started set of cheap discs off Amazon. Carts bags, and DOZENS of discs later...$$$
Hiking.
I got into theater lighting in high school & college. Years after graduating and getting a “real” job I discovered a bunch of all volunteer community theaters in the towns around me. I started doing lighting design, and over time amassed a bunch of my own gear. I’ve also gotten a bit of a name for figuring out special effects. In my basement I have a dozen professional LED stage lights, strobe lights, a fog machine & hazer, and a bunch of bins of odds & ends used for various effects.
I thought I would learn to design electronics. Turns out the tools for that are expensive. Also enclosures to make anything look good often cost more than the electronics. Then you've got to get the boards made at a factory if you want them looking slick, so you've got to make 5 or 10 of every project at the very least -- or your wasting perfectly good circuit boards.
I found a neat hack to fund my hobby though. Turns out you can just call a lawyer and after some paperwork, you're the owner of an engineering company! For less than the cost of a high-end oscilloscope! What a wild world we live in.
Coffee.
I started with cheap pre group coffee from the supermarket for less than £3 a bag and a chemex I picked up for £20. I now have four grinders, a bunch of pour over gear and an espresso machine (marax), worth several thousand. Plus a £80 a month fresh coffee bean habit.
I like to repair and restore broken vintage audio gear.
"Wow, this 60's Sansui amp and those 70's AR speakers are practically free! I already have all the tools I need to repair them, it'll be fun and cheap. When I get these restored, I won't need anything else ever again!"
How little did I know.
Was violist (played the viola) for years. It's similar to a violin just a bit bigger and deeper. Have a true love for it... But it's expensive to maintain after a while because it's good to keep up private lessons, the maintenance of the instrument, and then having to buy sheet music/music books for only playing one song, one passage.. I miss it.. not the most expensive hobby, but got that way for me cause I am a mom of four and married.. SOOOO yeah
Simple, I read. And with the internet I never have to worry about buying books.
Food...I like cuisine. Requires eating out. I find a place, don't care about the cost. Try something I've never had. It can get expensive.
knitting/crochet. Yarn is expensive as hell.
I started knitting for my kids when we were living in colorado.
so I ended up processing wool from raw fleece -> hat
raw merino fleece, raw alpaca fleece, Scouring soap, dye, dyeing classes with natalie redding, spinning wheel, drum carder, hackle, table loom, warping thing for yarn
Math
ended up going to school for math education (with pell grant $500 per 6 month term) I can't pass the exit exam. tried 5 times out of those I had to pay out of pocket for 4 of them $480.
and surprise, I got dxed with ADHD. That's why I couldn't pass the tests. now I pay $50 a month for it (doc + meds)
Fish tank.
Not sure if you’d call it a hobby or more of a collection but I collect mechanical wrist watches and that can get expensive fast.
I started with a mechanical under $100, with a decent movement and a display back case so I could see the gears and rotor inside, and that could’ve been it. But once you get the bug, you want to get different types of movements, different case sizes, maybe some complications, sooner or later you’re going to start wanting some hand finishing, and then it gets really expensive. I wanna get into mechanical watch repair too but that gets really expensive and takes a lot of skill and time so I’m going to hold off a few years I think. Plus once I go there, there’s no coming back. I’ll be buying broken stuff on eBay constantly and there goes all my paycheques
RC stuff, but only kinda? My dad got me into micro helicopters about a decade ago. I now have several dozen planes, drones, helis, etc. Not to mention multiple RC radios, batteries, chargers, and FPV goggles. Absolutely love it, though. To be fair, it's been a few thousand dollars over a decade. It ads up sure... but quite a bit less than I spend on video games, and more satisfying. :)
None of my hobbies are inexpensive (bikes, guitars and parenting)
Every time a friend tries to get me to take up snowboarding or some other gear based hobby I'm like, "are you fucking insane?"
Cross stitching.
I must have $700 worth of floss a 200$ custom stand and then accessories, I just gave away 82 skeins of off brand that advertised dmc dye standards, but WEREN'T. Don't buy floss from Amazon kids, it's worth it to do a custom order from joanns or Michael's mid project.
It started with wanting to do a fun little Christmas ornament project with the Littles and now I have 7 mid finished projects including a massive LOTR project I've restated 3 times, that has 1 of 12 8×11 pages done on this beast l nearly 3'x2' Aida cloth.
Used to homebrew. At first I thought it'd be cheaper than buying my own beer but it quickly ratcheted-up with grain mills, larger and larger pots and burners, finding places to store the fermenting/aging beer, finding time to brew, finding time to bottle/keg, the clean-up and mess...and, in certain cases, you go through the whole process to find an entire batch has been ruined.
Ketamine
Before you know it, you're spending 44 billion on a social media platform.
Yep, that racks up a bill really fast.
I mean a gram is like 25€ and lasts maybe for a fun night. Doesn't sound exactly cheap.
But it also isn't more expensive than drinking (especially in a bar) and a lot more fun.
keyboards, F-ing keyboards
Hobby electronics started cheep, with a crappy soldering iron (a good precision one was the best purchase ever) and some cheep parts, ended up with a room stuffed with a thousand dollars worth or parts and a few thousand more in test equipment.
Firearms.
It was fairly inexpensive before the pandemic. But since it's been a nightmare of price gouging.
It's also one of those hobbies where buying one thing leads down a rabbit hole of spending.
Every. Single. One.
That is the right answer.
My dad got me in homebrewing so at least in that one I didn't invest much because I use his (our) setup.
Exactly. Some more than others but currently:
Magic the Gathering, eletronics (repair/modding), retro video games, mechanical keyboards, coffee, board games, even cooking... I wanted to fix my Switch because I didn't want to pay $120 for the repair and I definitely already paid more than $120 in tools. I will use them for other repairs and modding things so it isn't that bad.
Great post OP!
ITT: Everybody's current/longest hobby.
Mine is boardgames. You start free by playing somebody else's collection, then you get the urge to start your own...
Hiking. You start out with what you got. Then on the first few hikes you find out what gear you absolute have to bring with you. Then when you have a fine little gear stash, you begin adding things from the never ending “nice to have” list. Then you go to outdoor stores just to have a look around… HA!
REI is my crack
Fishing. Who would have thought it was so easy to get addicted to buying various baits and lures.
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!
Thinkpads.
Sim racing and Photography
Started with a $200 wheel and pedals setup, now my rig is worth we’ll over $2.5k and is basically top of the line. Upgraded parts one at a time over the last few years and it’s now as good as it gets.
Photography has me slowly upgrading lenses and eventually a new camera body. Just upgraded to a 200-500 F5.6 lens the other week for when I’m going to shoot the Daytona 24 this coming January.
but, nobody gets into simracing and photography thinking they are cheap hobbies, do they? I mean, sure you can get a start with a low budget but everybody knows the really nice toys are $$$
True, but they started inexpensive. Most everything can be done with a few hundred bucks of hardware in both fields. It's only when you want to get into the really high end stuff that it gets expensive. My $300 used Nikon D3500 works phenomenally for almost everything, and that's true for most entry level gear.
I don't get sim-racing. Even an expensive setup doesn't feel anywhere close to real driving.
It gets close, but it’s more about the competition. I’m not a real race car driver, nor will I be in the future, so I’m not chasing 100% realism.
You lose the seat of the pants feel, but there’s been a good amount of improvements to hardware over the last few years that have really increased the fidelity of it.
Lmao you’re so fixated on sim racing, you responded to it twice in the same post!
We can say that about anything, but lots of us choose not to because it’s more fun. You should try, it’s not hard.
“A flight simulator doesn’t feel like actually flying.” “Reading a book isn’t like actually being there.”
Neat.
Camping and camping gear. It can be so cheap and easy, but when you start buying high end gear it adds up quick.
Not to mention the different types of camping, backpacking, car camping, glamping, etc. Car camping “overlanding” gear is awesome, but so expensive.
Rc cars. I got a crappy 1/6 scale truck (newbright) for shits and giggles to see what it could all do before I fried and broke it. Ended up slowly dumping a bunch of crap into it (Batteries, lights, new controller, esc, new brushless motor etc)
Wouldn't have been quite so bad if it was a "normal" scale rc, but parts for something 1/6 scale is pretty pricey. I could have just bought a better machine, but it was still fun and I learned a bit about rc stuff. This is the frankenRC https://i.imgur.com/ey1jJYX.jpg
Film photography. Holy shit did that add up.
It's funny because you can go buy an old rugged K-1000 with a basic 50mm prime lens for under $100, a couple rolls of film for less than $20, and the developing costs you can put off until later. That's still about a tenth of the cost of a good new digital camera and this thing is built like a tank and forces you to learn the fundamentals. Very quickly, you'll discover that your film and developing costs will quickly outpace the initial investment on a digital camera. Moreover, you've discovered that finding good glass to match you camera is no cheaper and a lot more difficult than finding lens for that sexy new digital camera that was outside your budget initially.
Electronics repair and projects
Bonsai
Beekeeping. It gets expensive very fast and doesn't seem to ease year on year
I bought a $20 Stanley sharptooth saw and a few second hand chisels.
See the banner on !woodworking@lemmy.ca
And I haven't even bought any stationary tools 😅
When I first got into my hobby (DJ) I thought I only needed to pay into the set up cost of buying equipment (turntables, mixer, sound), but I eventually learned that I had to keep buying records because I couldn't just mix the same two recorded forever, and that got expensive.
For me it was Badminton. You can start off with cheap $15 rackets and plastic shuttlecocks. Now my racket is $260 and I play with feather shuttlecocks which are about $2 a piece and only last a few rallies.
Knitting/crocheting and cannabis. Not (always) together. Yarn art to pass the time while sitting with my mom - I start a lot of things and always need new yarn, but I never finish anything. Cannabis because I started making candies for a sick friend and it's pretty easy to get caught up in different strains and what's on sale this week.
Coffee for sure, never saw myself owning a $300 coffee grinder a few years ago....
Smart phones and headphones aren't exactly cheap but, I have built a bit of an expensive hobby around collecting them lol
Instant (analog) photography and collecting pins and buttons. Turns out film is expensive and buying pins are expensive. Started out with friends giving me pins to stick on my bag and now I have close to hundred pins on my pin wall. At least they look pretty rad.
Fountainpens. Started with some cheap Chinese pens. Now I have multiple vintage pens and a Montblanc that I love writing with.
Collecting vinyl records. I started 10 years ago when you could get lots of records for 3-5$ per record. Now everyone is crazy about collecting and they can cost 40-50$. Was a great investment if I sell them. But I enjoyed collecting them regardless of value.
Running as soon as I discovered the Runningshowgeeks subreddit.
Guitar. Pedals, amps, cables, picks, more picks, straps, strings, mics, stands, clamps, etc all add up. Oh, and of course you're always enticed to upgrade, but you can't get rid of the one you've grown to love, so now you have n+1 guitars.
To be clear, you can do amazing things with a Fender Bullet, but it's a slippery slope for sure.
Collecting military surplus/old random military shit. Helmets, great coats, radios, a field phone, ww2 machete. Ya get the idea.
Photography
Gaming
Game collecting
What started out as picking up C64, Atari, and Nintendo games in the 80s and 90s has turned into a collection of thousands of games totalling tens of thousands of dollars...
I started gaming back in 90's and here it was just buy a game and you got i all. Then I got to pc gaming and watercooling, in the 00-10, And then something happend in these Decades becous what I used to pay fore a full pc with high end components and watercooling is the damn price fore the RAM.
For me it's photography. I originally bought a camera and lens second hand. Now over the past two years its become rather a lot of money. I bought a Nikon Z8 last month and it was definitely worth the money.
Cigars.
It was only supposed to be a few of the affordable ones with basic accessories.
EDC (everyday carry) this can include pen, notebook, knife, phone, fidget, etc. my most expensive piece that is in my current rotation is my fidget clicker in full brass from unquiet hands. that one chunk of metal and magnets cost me $130
Playstation 4. Huge money went into buying discs and digital games.
Hunting. When I was younger, poorer man I used a hand me down lever action rifle and a $5 orange vest to fill my freezer with cheap venison that I would butcher myself. for less than $100 in licenses, ammo and packaging material I could put 3 or 4 deer in the freezer in 1 weekend.
Now, I have multiple gun safes full of various guns, all of them to serve "different purposes" like long range, brush gun, restricted weapons hunting areas, slug gun restricted areas, hunting shotguns, competition shot guns. Then there's the hunting gear, knifes, packs, laser range finders, reloading equipment, hunting lease payments, guide fees, out of state application fees.
Last year I shot 1 deer and paid $140 to have someone else butcher it for me.
I'd like to get into hunting. I'm getting my firearm license in a couple weeks. Going to get hunting license and plan to start soonest. Any advice for someone starting out?
Get with a friend or family member who knows what they are doing and follow them around. You can look into dedicated hunting groups but that can be hit or miss. It's usually not hard to find a group dedicated to helping kids, women or veterans to get out and hunt, but if you are a grown man there's not much options.
3D printing. Purchased a cheap 3D printer to save money printing things instead of buying things. 5 printer print farm later, no idea why I'm doing this to myself.
Scale modeling -- you can pick up a cheap kit at a big box craft store with some paint and glue for $40. Before you know it, you're importing specialty kits from Japan, rigging up a spray booth in your basement for your airbrush, and taking trips to air museums to get reference photos of the zinc chromate primer for a cockpit interior.
Cooking.
Oh boy, I’m not the worst but I’m pretty bad when it comes to “rabbit holes”
Vinyl records and hifi audio, photography (especially film), mechanical keyboards, cigars, old german cars. I just recently got into music production and modular synthesis. Someone needs to stop me.
3D printing.
Mechanical keyboards
Mechanical keyboards. I have a collection of 5 totalling to way more than anybody would expect keyboards to cost.
Disc hording from thrifts.
(Blank DVD/CD-R.)
I will buy a Ubiquiti edge router to move away from the consumer grade network gear, turned into just one more $500 server to complete my homelab cluster. Oh who am I kidding the homelab is never “complete”.
I think I've dropped over 1k on gunpla at this point. But also probably video games. I think there have been some games where I've spent 1k. Now that might sound insane but these are games where I've probably played for 10k hours over 10 years.
To be clear I still think video games is one of the cheapest hobbies as long as you're not a whale playing gacha games. But this post did ask about hobbies you've gradually put a lot of money into so video games probably fit?
Smart home. Probably over 10k over the years
That moment when your hobbies are most of the comments. Running, biking, camping, computers and photography (haven't spent any money on this yet so we good) :/
Believe it or not, self-hosting! I went from renting a VPS for $40 a month, to purchasing an entire $150 machine at home, plus $50 or so in additional storage, plus a $20 a month VPS solely to bypass NAT restrictions... plus a few hundred dollars more when I first started, because I cheaped out on components and managed to brick not one, but two Intel BIOSes trying to update them.
Gaming consoles and all of the parts for fixing and modding them. Got an OG Xbox that crashed, so I bought new caps, then I needed a soldering iron, then I got an Xbox 360 so I needed a modchip and a flasher as well as a 4TB harddrive and then I got a FAT PS3 with broken SMD caps so I needed a preheater and a hot air station and then I needed to get all of these controllers which are worn out so I needed potentiometers, thumbsticks...
I do play my PS2, PS3, Xbox, 360, One etc. all the time (they don't just sit in my room to look pretty) but yeah, I 've probably sunk thousands of euros into maintaining them. 😅
I use the equipment to repair other things I get for free or very cheap, so it's not just a money sink...or at least that's how I rationalize my hobby. Repaired a Nikon camera with it...then I bought lenses...just another rabbithole!
Nail dio power
That would require me to have lots of money to invest.
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.
making pendants
Electronics / microcontrollers.
Took just a few months to go from, "I can make a wifi connected weather station for like $20 in components!?" to "oscilloscopes cost how much?"
Has there already grown a noteworthy Arduino/ESP Community on Lemmy?
There are quite a few but none are super active.
I'm really happy I don't have enough space for that stuff. Otherwise I would be poor. It's hard enough to keep myself from buying another old computer.
I would love to read about this $20 weather station! Do you maybe have a link?
Mine is pretty basic but is built on the shoulders of giants. Also that $20 was from pre-pandemic / pre-chip shortage prices. I’m guessing it’s more like $35 now, or maybe high $20s from ali express.
I use Home Assistant for home automation. It has a now official addon called ESPHome for easily configuring esp devices and adding them to Home Assistant.
I bought some cheap dev boards off amazon and thankfully they worked an esp8266 microcontroller with IC2 headers and a microusb port already onboard a bmp280 that measures temp, humidity, and barometric pressure a lux sensor with a plastic dome over the top I soldered them together on a prototyping boardAll the components were supported by esphome, so I just needed to write the device config and then flash the devboard via esphome (in a web browser) over the built in usb.
I 3d printed a housing for it, but you can also buy boxes. It needs airflow but also needs to stay dry. You can use a spray sealant to help avoid corrosion from ambient humidity. I skipped that step because I want to see how quickly it becomes problematic… and I should probably check on that.
https://www.amazon.com/Springfield-Wireless-Comfort-Thermometer-5279298/dp/B091C9J7XK?ref_=ast_sto_dp
You can get a cheap oscilloscope that uses USB and your computer. https://www.sainsmart.com/products/sainsmart-dds-140-40m-200m-s-virtual-oscilloscope-logic-analyzer
Not that I have an electronics problem
Good soldering gear already makes me wince. I couldn't imagine paying $500+ for an oscilloscope.
Fortunately I'm more interested in the software side of things... thank God nobody charges for programming toolchains anymore.
Same. I'm lucky for software to be my hobby/career. It's practically free. Contrary to popular misconception, it doesn't require any kind of special or more powerful hardware (for most dev, at least). Maybe $150 for a second monitor, for sanity, but that's not actually necessary.
...I mean, I do have good hardware too, but that's for my gaming hobby, not my software hobby.
Can you recommend any good soldering gear for an intermediate level? I've done plenty of soldering over the years but have always used crappy low end products. It's always been a struggle to properly do a clean-true solder (not just heating the solder like I see everywhere) even though I try to meticulously maintain my equipment. I'm hoping that it's just the equipment I use and a higher end one will make things a breeze like I see the professional's use.
It's really a pain in my ass. On top of maintaining the equipment I have whole setups I've constructed to hold wires and equipment snugly so I can properly apply heat. I purchased a high temp kit but it's cheap as well and still sometimes run into the same problem, with the smaller components and projects though I'm afraid to use it and overheat something that can't handle it.
yeah I got a fancy lab power supply but stopped at oscilloscopes, those things are expensive.
it's still cheap and fun to do a lot of stuff, but now I wanna build a sound-card based oscilloscope.
I haven't bought an oscilloscope yet either, but I keep window shopping.
Lol I feel ya. I ended up making and selling electronics kits to fund the hobby somewhat.
I have been using cheap vintage oscilloscopes the whole time.
Not sure what they go for now but $100 for a 20MHz scope and $200 for a 100MHz was what it was several years ago. Cheapest I got off a buddy for $40. I am still using that one.
Sometimes I fix broken ones and sell them. One time I got one that they thought was broken but turned out it was just the basic settings. I like trying different ones so I have gone through a dozen or so by now.
Now* that I think about it, o-scopes are a whole other hobby lol.
Anyway. Yeah by the time you get the test gear and enough sensors and microcontrollers and whatever it adds up.
Right now I'm working on a power supply design for a 50W class D stereo. Found out big toroidal transformers are not cheap. Oof. And enclosures big enough (especially if labeled "amplifier" or "stereo") are ridiculously spendy.
This sounds like the point where you dive into the next rabbit hole of making enclures. At least I could see that happening.
I'm looking to make some wooden enclosures for some things myself.
My next project is to make an oscilloscope clock
Erk. I got into this. What’s the tipping point that gets you eyeing oscilloscopes? I’m at the fiddly smd stage.
My next step is custom boards and smds, and an oscilloscope seems like a good way to diagnose when reflow goes wrong. I already have had some fights with I2C using dev boards. But really I'm eyeing one because I have allusions about doing fine calibration on analog sensors.
I should add that I've been talking myself out of an oscilloscope for 2+ years now. I don't REALLY need one.
https://www.sainsmart.com/products/sainsmart-dds-140-40m-200m-s-virtual-oscilloscope-logic-analyzer