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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.
Flight-simming. I started with a cheap joystick. Now my desk is littered with touch-screens, custom controllers etc.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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...$$$
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.
knitting/crochet. Yarn is expensive as hell.
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.
Simple, I read. And with the internet I never have to worry about buying books.
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.
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.
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.
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. :)
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.
Ketamine
Before you know it, you're spending 44 billion on a social media platform.
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
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?"
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)
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!
Fishing. Who would have thought it was so easy to get addicted to buying various baits and lures.
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.
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 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
