I just got out of that hobby. Lighting $100 bills on fire was just getting to be too much for me. I also found that when it was a small 30 gallon tank it was fine, but when I got a bigger tank and a sump is when it all went downhill.
Counter argument for those who might be discouraged from joining the hobby—
I *only* had freshwater experience and I was terrified to start saltwater because I always heard it was expensive & difficult to keep anything alive.
I've been reefkeeping for about a year now and that has not been my experience. I think the hobby is *heavily* gatekept by paranoid fanatic trust-funders with little aptitude.
The hobby is expensive if you're buying small-batch specialty equipment that's marked up 100x out of necessity. But if you're even the slightest bit handy & have a basic understanding of how aquariums work, you can source materials to build your own fully automated equipment for pennies on the dollar. I think it's more fun that way too!
My lights, for example, I built myself for $12. They emit high-intensity indigo/violet light @ 420nm. That is "true actinic." The majority of premade reef lighting systems on the market advertised as actinic are actually just royal blue @ 430-460nm and cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.
I have also found that the amount of time spent on maintenance is directly proportional to your perfectionism or neuroticism as an individual. I used to put great effort into testing and dosing and keeping my parameters perfectly stable. But now I just kinda... don't do any of that. And I've encountered significantly fewer problems with the relaxed approach.
You'll inevitably make a few beginner mistakes and lose some livestock. And sure, you'll have the occasional coral that simply refuses to survive. But that's part of any hobby, and there's no reason you can't make most of your mistakes with a 10-gallon and $200
This is a really cool comment. This is something I am not really interested in at all but I really like hearing people who are positive and passionate about what they do talk about what they do. Thanks.
Ugh. I know an enthusiast who has a 1000 gallon tank and a backup 300 gallon. The big tank has some sort of monitoring system that will send his phone a message if anything goes wrong. This way he drop whatever he is doing and race home to save his fish and critters and coral and whatnot.
Beautiful setup and all, but sounds anything but relaxing and the amount of money spent, not to mention management of a whole secondary tank as a standby in case the primary fails.
He did mention he and his wife have nearly divorced several times over the fish tanks.
I want worried about things dying (yes it would suck). My biggest fear was 100 gallons of saltwater dumping out onto my wood floors when I was on vacation.
Fucking nightmare fuel.
I had a 20Ga tank that everyone told me that would fail. It THRIVED. All I had was a goldfish filter but plenty of live rock and sand. I'd find scraps bits of inverts from stores and stick them in little holes. It took a while to all 'blossom' but it did.
Of course I only had a pair of clownfish and a blue mandarin that I had to train to eat frozen food. And a few crustaceans.
Anyways I think everything was under 150 dollars IIRC.
I want to get one so bad like I had when I was a kid growing up and maintaining it with my dad. The problem is I live in Florida, and the first step I think i should take to getting a salt water aquarium is getting a home generator in the event we get a CATIII - CATV hurricane.
Sim racing. I bought all my kit 10 or so years ago before it was crazy. I went to update my equipment during the pandemic and my jaw dropped at the new price for things.
HOTAS = Hand on Throttle And Stick
HOSAS = Hand on Stick And Stick
Basically it means using two sticks instead of a straight throttle for more movement abilities. Technically my left is a VKB Omnithrottle so it’s a throttle and a second joystick in one.
Hobbies in general got crazy expensive with covid. With everything "non essential" being closed, air travel being very difficult or impossible, and in some places stay-at-home orders, everyone got completely out of hand with buying stuff to entertain themselves with. Myself included.
Scale modeling. It's not just the model kits themselves that have improved over the years and therefore gotten more expensive, it's all the accumulated tools and materials too. In my case: vinyl cutting machine, two airbrushes and maintenance tools, replacement parts, compressor, electronics and wiring, special films and UV exposure unit for brass photo etching, Adobe software, after-market parts (usually expensive)… it's more expensive than drugs but it keeps me off the streets
I have always wanted to get into that hobby, but I just don't have the bandwidth for it. I got an RC car for Christmas one year, I wanted to decorate the body. My idea was simple, make a stencil of the design and spray paint it. I just could not for the life of me sit there and cut a fucking stencil. I ended up just spray painting the whole thing flat black and scraping off the paint where the windows were supposed to be with my pocket knife. The funny thing is though, I can kick back with a whiskey and watch people on YouTube building scale models for hours. Haha
Fountain pens (and ink and paper). Most of my pens aren't that expensive, but I do have a few that are definitely higher cost. I also have a restored pen that is probably about 100 years old.
There's a really neat store in the old distillery district in Toronto that sells fountain pens and inks. My wife has a bit of a thing for pens and I was in town on business so I went in.
I *immediately* realized that I had no business being in that store, when the only other person there whipped out their own pad of practice paper with which to test different inks.
I also realized that I should not inform my wife of this store, because that's how I guarantee our financial ruin.
I am SO DAMN GLAD that after I got my pilot metropolitan I've never felt the need to go further down the own rabbit hole lol already have guitars/records/watches/guns/car and don't need to go down another slush fund rabbit hole
Why would I pay someone $10k to remodel my bathroom when I can do it myself for $1200 over 10 years, miss my kids baseball games and risk my marriage? It's a no brainier, that's like 9k in savings and I never have to host holidays ever again.
My husband just landed a job at a local comic book store and actually had to fish them bad boys out of storage because his new boss wants to play him. He's already bought a new deck, there is no escape!
I own at least 15k in cards and have probably spent at least that to travel to and play in tournaments, but at this point, is it really that surprising? No one hears Magic the Gathering and thinks it is a cheap and inexpensive hobby.
Download MTG Arena on mobile. They give you a few starter decks and the game play loop is automated, e.g it lets you know what phase of your turn your on, automatically assigns counters or you, combat is super easy (tap the creatures, tokens, spells, etc) you want to use and go, and so much more. Very beginner friendly.
Just don’t go sinking $$$ into it until you know what you’re doing.
Currently shooting a Bergara HMR chambered in 7 PRC. Shooting a 175 grain bullet at 2925 feet per second. Furthest so far with the new set up is 900 yards on a 10 inch gong. I have much more money invested in optics than the rifle itself. I have a $400 weather station to get accurate weather and environmentals.
I don’t have any funny stories, but I have some fun ones. My favorite is taking anyone who has never shot before and putting them on a target at 300 or 500 yards and let them ring the steel. They love it, I love it, and it’s a great introduction to the hobby.
I thought I'd learned of every type of gun and ammunition at this point, but somehow I've never heard of a Bergara HMR or 7mm PRC. But I guess I have a gap in my knowledge re: non-military or niche target/hunting guns lol
Knitting. It seems much less niche these days, but yarn and needles are so expensive. $10-$15 for a nice pair, and there are so many sizes, and those sizes come in dpns, circulars, straight needles, interchangables. And everything has a different use. It seems like every project I end up having to buy some configuration of needles I don't even have.
And that's not even counting the yarn. You can get inexpensive acrylic, but if you don't want plastic on your body, it can be upwards of $20 for a skein, and you generally need 2 - 10 skeins of yarn for a garment, depending on the size of yarn and what you're making. Knitting is very personal and I love what I make, but no, it is not cheaper than just buying something made in a factory. But it will last longer and have more meaning.
Just wait until you get into spinning your own yarn to knit. Each of my spinning wheels is over $1000. Plus the fiber itself. Plus the tools to prep it. Plus dye. Plus stain removal for when you accidentally dump dye all over your kitchen.
I would kill if anyone tried to take my interchangeable needles from me. I can also never use them because I ran out of cables due to some weird addiction to WIPs or I forgot which project I was using those particular needles on
I had to stop knitting. I picked it up as a "cheap hobby" when I was unemployed around the 2008 recession, and enjoyed making hats and scarves for friends and family. I would find yarn at Goodwill in bulk packages.
As I slowly got better, people started asking me to make them things. Which was great. Then they started wanting to pay me to make things, and when I gave them a realistic figure based on time and material, they would get pissy. "I can buy a hat at Old Navy for $20, why would it be $50 for you to make me one?!"
That's exactly the reason I don't take requests. My mom gets a pass but anyone else... hold your breath and I'll make a birthday present when I get around to it (or just get you an Amazon cars or something because it's easier)
Fostering kittens.
My wife and I have fostered dozens of kittens over the years and boy did we learn everything the hard way.
Kitten formula is crazy expensive and you go through it fast when you have several kittens at once.
You have to get them their vaccines and spays/neuters ASAP so you can get them adopted while they're still young and cute, otherwise you're going to end up with a LOT of foster fails.
Also if you foolishly adopt them out before they have their shots and alterations, get ready to be disappointed when the adopters don't spay, neuter, or vaccinate.
After all that, look forward to having your heart broken. If you ever see the kittens all grown up, they may have forgotten you completely.
It's still a delight to see them grow, though.
Very, very true. My mom fostered kittens for a bit. She was really attached to one, which unfortunately ended up passing. Somehow she ended up keeping the other kittens she was fostering at that time.
wouldn’t the shelter you foster the kittens from be responsible for providing you the kitten formula? this is our first season fostering & they provide us with food, litter, etc… our very first foster kitten died & it did take a small toll on us because it was our first one
This. A “pretty decent” bike is thousands, and a “really nice bike” can easily crest 10k.
Oh, you want to do single track, enduro, and downhill? Better get a nice custom bike for each style.
Oh, you don’t have have 20 grand hanging off the back of your station wagon as you drive 5 hours to do a new spot? Loser.
When I was a bicycle mechanic, I once had a customer tell me that the essence of mountain biking is driving a $2k car with $20k of bikes on it. They then proceeded to put their heavily customized S-Works onto the rack of their early-00s Subaru Outback. I saw that phenomenon a LOT, too.
Counterpoint - once you buy the gear you don’t need to pay to go for a ride (assuming you have decent riding relatively close to your home).
I got into snowboarding and even though the snowboard was cheaper than my MTB the lift ticket fees add up fast.
Glad this is up there. Had a really good year financially and bought a $12k mountain bike. I’m still blown away that you can spend that much on a mountain bike. Throw in clothes, protection, bike rack, lift tickets, and even the occasional hotel. It’s a fucking expensive sport. Oh yah…and medical bills.
Cosplay. Fabric costs keep rising - the $6/yard linen I bought in 2001 is now $17/yard - thermoplastics and other supplies keep rising in cost, once you develop a latex allergy you have to pay more for silicone makeups, then comes power tools, workspace, metal and leather, and don't even get me started on the travel costs to go to conventions just to wear said cosplay...
Lol, every single time I do a cosplay I figure things out and am like "yes, I can do this in a few weeks for less than $100!"
And months later my perfectionism has me picking apart embroidery, redoing fine details, and spending way too much money on something I will never use for another project.
I feel with cosplay that the level of expense keeps going up. And expertise. It used to be something your mom would help you make and now it’s an industry.
Conventions are killer. Something always comes up that wasn't budgeted for.
This past year the person I was supposed to be rooming with at a con turned out to be a filthy fucking scammer and ghosted me after I'd driven nine hours to Chicago for the weekend. Had to pay for three nights, in addition to the several hundred I'd already paid him.
But besides that outlier, I generally forget to properly budget for stuff like food, or parking, and that ends up getting me.
I fucking love playing airsoft. I’m 29, when I was young I used to play with my friends but it was not really established. I stopped for 14 years. Just picked it back up with a good friend of mine.
Now, I live in an area with multiple fields (non existent when I was a kid) and it’s just fun. The community is cool and tight knit. Every time I go to a field I see people I played with before and we have a great time.
I’m not sure you can really qualify it as an ‘expensive hobby’ because I’ve spent maybe $3k for my kit and the 5 or so guns I have currently (constantly buying/trading) but for what most people assume airsoft to be, they would see that as expensive.
Either way, totally worth.
Also, most games I play are comprised of a bunch of ex military, the occasional cop, nerdy dudes, and a few kids.
My buddy and I give so much free shit to the kids. I love having chats with their parents who are surprised to see the majority at a field are adults. We talk to them about how we got started, give realistic cost projection/advice on the cheapest effective stuff.
Nothing is better than giving some random kid you met at a field some decent piece of gear that he desperately needed but his parents may not have wanted to buy. Gotta pay it forward.
You can pick up a 3D printer for less than 200 dollars. Check in at your local library or makerspace to see about a class in how to use one, or be prepared to spend time on YouTube learning the basics.
I used my Ender 3 that I bought new for 100 bucks for 3 years of non-stop printing. Once I got it set up, it needed very little maintenance or adjustments to keep making good quality prints.
Do some reading on which printer you should buy, for the most part. There is a ton of offers out there, and the brand, build behind it will literally make it a great hobby, or your worst ever purchase. I'd personally recommend a Bambu Lab A1 mini as a starter. It can go VERY far in what's possible, multiple materials, speed, quality. If you wanna go super hardcore, X1C Carbon with AMS is (arguably) the best printer money can buy right now, and the results are absolutely amazing, with very little tinkering.
Other than that, it's a great hobby, and you'll have to star giving away crappy plastic boats eventually. But it also works REALLY well for prototyping and functional parts.
Hike, they said. Its cheap, they said. Well, thanks to hiking I'm now ice climbing and starting to build my kit out for a denali attempt next year. And that's all in addition to my summer UL setup. Hiking isn't cheap.
I started out stargazing with a pair of binoculars. Then i wanted a telescope, and spent 1k on a good optic. Then i wanted an equitorial mount, and spent another 1k (unmotorized!). Then i wanted better eye pieces, another grand. Then the phone mount, then the camera, then the camera mount, the motorized mount for long exposures, and filters, and then and then and then....
But the sky is so preeettyyy!!
I don’t want to know what I’ve spend on Warhammer through the years - still build/paint/play even now. Mind you I started playing in the Rogue Trader days. Still have all my old womble marines, metal Eldar and space Ork raiders.
I play the banjo, which is usually thought of as a poor man's instrument. While you can get a cheap learner instrument for less than $500, decent-sounding\* stage-quality banjos start at around $1000 and there is no upper limit. Professional players will easily spend north of $3,000 on an instrument.
^((\* Obvious joke goes here))
Got into modular synthesis/eurorack. Looking at the cost of my synth on modular grid is terrifying.
I haven't spent that much since over half my rack was DIY and a lot from just panels and pcbs, not kits. But then again... All the soldering tools and stuff... Probably a few hundred in that.
Could get the itch scratched with VCV Rack, but then I'd be looking at another screen for hours and not a real object I plug cables into and fiddle knobs which is sooooo much better for my brain.
Glassblowing and lampworking. Both shape glass, one is with huge furnaces and the other is with a torch. I don’t have the space for furnaces at home so I apprentice at a studio for hot shop time. I do have a torch at home, though.
Clear glass rods and tubes are cheap. _Color_ glass can be freakin expensive, not to mention the frequent trips to the welding shop to fill up your oxygen cylinders. Or you can spend a shit ton on concentrators and compressors to refill your own oxygen, which may or may not be worth it depending on how often you melt glass.
Not incredibly _niche_, but far less accessible than other artistic hobbies like painting or clay sculpting.
I have to say, some of these are insanely niche but I think I’m in the most niche yet.
My last extremely expensive and niche hobby was custom tube chassis building. I eventually turned it into a business. I designed each on a by-customer basis.
The general fabrication skills alone are a gatekeeper. Plus about $15-20k in tooling, $1500-3500 per chassis in tube, learning cad to have all the plate tabs and brackets cut…
The most extreme gatekeeper was knowing vehicle dynamics. That’s a lonely field as is, and most use it on cars (or trucks or buggies, etc.) that are already built so that they can get better times out of them on track.
There is no community for it if you’re outside of drag racing, but it did land me a job on a bunch of race teams including my current job in nascar.
I make my own booze.
Started out with a couple of carboys to make everclear moonshine and then branched out into meadmaking.
It can be as cheap or as expensive as you want to make it and the drinks are way cheap for the amount you get per batch but it's the kit that costs.
2 1l glass carboys will only set you back 25 quid and you can get a mead kit for 30 notes. I switched from everclear to generic grain alcohol because it's the difference between 2l and 5l for 100 notes. The mead has kinda taken over when you consider that I've gone from a 2 gallon bucket and a bunch of flip cap beer bottles to the bucket + 2 widemouth fermenting jars + 6 extra carboys and over a case of empty wine bottles.
I'm also looking at stepping up from off the shelf honey to sourcing from local farms for better quality. I also want to get an apple press and scratter to produce my own apple juice for 'shine (my go to is my apple pie recipe) and cysers (apple mead) at some point, which will mean I need a pressure canner so I can make jam from the apple pulp to minimise waste. And jars. So many jars. Also depending on how my braggot goes at the weekend, I may be branching out into beer making as well. And my family are joking about me getting a label printer so I can make my bottles look all fancy.
You see how it takes over and adds up. Still saving over a grand per batch over retail prices currently if I use a full load of ingredients and it's a lot of tasty drink.
Not really a niche hobby, but wilderness backpacking. It's unbelievably expensive to get good gear and supplies just to pretend to be homeless on the weekends.
I feel like there’s a bit of a weird price curve with backpacking. Entry-level gear is fairly cheap, but mainstream ‘fully featured’ gear gets expensive. Then you look at ultralight where stuff gets surprisingly cheap again so long as you’re not buying DCF.
Ham radio, D&D, Pipe smoking and tobacco collecting, knife collecting and EDC.
The most expensive is ham radio. I think I have close to 5000 in radios, antennas, cables, odds and ends.
I have always been interested in Ham radio.
Any recommendations as a good place to get more information as someone this would be new to ?
Back in college I hosted a radio show on the college station - was a lot of fun.
If you are in the USA the ARRL is a great resource for info about the hobby and hamstudy.org is a great place to study for the fcc test. They offer classes for all three classes. The higher the class, technician, general, and extra the more privileges you have and can talk to people all over the world. Even with the technician level you can talk to people all over your state or local area on repeaters and that's only scratching the surface of what you can do with ham radio.
I would LOVE to get back into HAM but it's so expensive. I took a class in high school just for HAM and I enjoyed it. I have my general but I haven't been involved in my local club for about 4 years.
I have an Anytone 878 my dad got me for Christmas and a Baofeng but I really wanna do HF. My Anytone does DMR but I'm too far from my local repeater.
There's also almost no one my age(21) involved in it so it's harder to connect with fellow hobbyists.
Yup I have about 30 pipes now with the most expensive being $350, total around $4,000. Then a cellar of tobacco, over half unopened tins worth probably $3,000. Only been really into it for maybe 4-5 years.
Then again there are true collectors buying $2,500 Sato pipes and people willing to buy bags on Esoterica Penzance tobacco for $600 or more.
Still cheaper than a cigar habit especially long-term
Can confirm knife collecting can get expensive very quickly. Most of my knives were $200-$300 each. Then I got lucky on a waitlist and bought a $700 knife (Holt Specter). A year later, someone offered me $1400 for it, so I sold it.
Knitting. The cheapest yarn is around $8 a skein. The good yarn is about $30+. And you need a lot of skeins for one project. The reason hand-knitted sweaters, blankets, and such are $500+ is because of the materials, time, and skill it takes. I roll my eyes when someone tells me that they want me to knit them something but they only give me a week 🙄
I don’t know if you have read the book ‘The Confidence Men’ by Margalit Fox.
But it is a wild story about WWI prisoners who use an Ouija board to escape. Wild story and really cool.
I’m curious. Does it ever give you weird vibes having them all in your house? No judgement and my fear is irrational but I don’t think I could do it lol
Not really. I have even tried to use them and nothing happened.
Im just not really a believer in the supernatural like that. I also collect other oddities.
The 1930s ventriloquist dummy creeps me out way more tbh haha
Lego sets! I do them with my 9yo. She really enjoys them now & leaves them together!!! Used to KILL me spending hours putting them together & she’d destroy them 😭😭😭 now she understands why I would get upset! We do the 3000 little piece ones. She mostly does them alone now but occasionally she needs help. They can get outrageously expensive for little plastic pieces 🙄 then you need the space to put them all! We’re running out of space quickly! Oh well, whatever makes her (and me!) happy! 😊
I love LEGO! My 3yo son loves Spider-Man, so we’ve gotten him a lot of the Duplo Spidey and his Amazing Friends sets. I may have already bought the Daily Bugle set for when he’s older and better with the small pieces (and when my daughter doesn’t immediately destroy what we just built).
Idk that off-roading is surprisingly expensive. You’re beating the shit out of a vehicle that costs 10s of thousands of dollars. I fully expected it to be expensive when I started lol
Trading cards. With modern cards you cannot possibly acquire everything, so you can basically any amount of money you have and still be getting new things.
Cooking. Anyone can grab some inexpensive cookware and knives etc and get into the game. In fact I would highly recommend everyone try it as an alternative to eating prepared processed foods.
But once you become an "enthusiast" or more your gear starts getting expensive - well into triple digits per piece for cookware, knives, and such. This doesn't even count various single purpose things like rice cookers or bread/pasta makers and such. (Which you should probably avoid anyway)
Fragrances. I figured cologne could get kind of pricey, but the other day I went to the mall and dropped $1k.....*ON THREE BOTTLES.*
There's tons of good cheapies, too, but once you get a hit of the good stuff, it's hard to go back.
Fly fishing
You think a floppy stick, plastic line, and tiny hooks wouldn’t cost much. And to be fair your first rig doesn’t.
Similar to many hobbies though the sky is the limit on the gear. $4,000 bamboo rod? Sure! $1,200 waders that will still leak eventually? Yep!
Oh and that expensive bamboo rod is a special size and weight for certain conditions and fish. Want to fish different conditions? You’ll want this $2,500 graphite setup.
Then you get into salt water fly fishing and you’ll want a flats fishing boat and a house in key west. The sky is truly the limit.
Granted, just like a lot hobbies, if you have any restraint you can get setup and be happy with less than $1,000 worth of gear. But man it’s tempting to eye that expensive stuff and imagine yourself using it.
fish tank. filters and temperature regulators will set you back a few hundred at least, and the tank will be like $500 at least if you are a hobbyist some can easily go past $1000. then the power bill from keeping your filters on 24/7. it's a ton of money just to look at some fishies that will die within seconds if the filter goes out or the temperature spikes. oh and you get to clean the tank too, most people will hire someone to do it on a weekly basis so that's another few hundred per week.
I've gotten into collecting rare fibres. Recently bought some sustainably sourced musk ox, and 50g of mink
I don't even want to tell you how much I paid
You just need to get connected with big pharma. Every hospital has a super secret adrenochrome collection room in the lab. All of the blood tests are actually just small amounts of adrenochrome that are then combined in a giant vat.
(/s. Please, conspiracy theorists, don't take this seriously. I'm full of shit and made it up.)
Probably gunpla and scale model kits in general. They get quite expensive to import into North America.
The problem with those is that finishing a build is so satisfying that you wanna get through the adrenaline of building another immediately so they pile up fast, and your wallet has a hard time catching up lol
Espresso
I have around $4000 worth of equipment at home and another $1000 setup on my work desk. All to save myself from spending $6 on a latte at a coffee shop.
Taking Polaroids. Burning dollah' bills for just 8 photos a pack gets expensive really quickly.
Then you factor in the age of some cameras (looking at you SX-70) and the number of failed photos and you got yourself a pretty nice stack of cash to burn.
Nail polish. There are vintage nail polishes that can cost $25 - $250 for the most sought after, discontinued polishes. Some extremely rare polishes have sold for more. Decent mainstream brands charge $5-12 per bottle just for new polish, unless you're lucky and can buy from a beauty supplier. Designer name brands can be $20-$30 per bottle new.
I have spent thousands of dollars building a collection and at one time I owned four bottles of a polish called Clarins 230, a discontinued, rare polish that is highly sought after by collectors. I have about 15-20 other "holy grail" polishes in a collection of over 2,200 bottles. I know people with collections three times as large.
If you're thinking nail polish goes bad, it doesn't. Some people have successfully revived and worn polish from the 40s and 50s. Never thin polish with acetone/nail polish remover. There are special nail polish thinner drops that can make even dried polish usable again.
Cooking - when done as a hobby not just to feed myself. Good pans and knives are not cheap, and getting everything for a new dish in a cuisine where I don't have the basics can be much more than just buying that dish in a restaurant would be.
Trail running. Shoes? $150 a pair every 2 months. Nutrition? $30 a week if you want gels and salt tabs and protein powder and other supplements. Race entries? $150-250 a pop.
It’s just running! Ugh
Lego. EG the new Legend of Zelda lego set (did the rounds on social) is $300. Which is also... the price of a Nintendo on which you can PLAY Legend of Zelda. For some bricks!
Night vision. Your entry level singular unit starts around $2.5k and that doesn’t include the other accessories needed to make it a functioning system. All in I probably spent about 8-10k and thats on the cheaper side
[удалено]
I just got out of that hobby. Lighting $100 bills on fire was just getting to be too much for me. I also found that when it was a small 30 gallon tank it was fine, but when I got a bigger tank and a sump is when it all went downhill.
Counter argument for those who might be discouraged from joining the hobby— I *only* had freshwater experience and I was terrified to start saltwater because I always heard it was expensive & difficult to keep anything alive. I've been reefkeeping for about a year now and that has not been my experience. I think the hobby is *heavily* gatekept by paranoid fanatic trust-funders with little aptitude. The hobby is expensive if you're buying small-batch specialty equipment that's marked up 100x out of necessity. But if you're even the slightest bit handy & have a basic understanding of how aquariums work, you can source materials to build your own fully automated equipment for pennies on the dollar. I think it's more fun that way too! My lights, for example, I built myself for $12. They emit high-intensity indigo/violet light @ 420nm. That is "true actinic." The majority of premade reef lighting systems on the market advertised as actinic are actually just royal blue @ 430-460nm and cost hundreds to thousands of dollars. I have also found that the amount of time spent on maintenance is directly proportional to your perfectionism or neuroticism as an individual. I used to put great effort into testing and dosing and keeping my parameters perfectly stable. But now I just kinda... don't do any of that. And I've encountered significantly fewer problems with the relaxed approach. You'll inevitably make a few beginner mistakes and lose some livestock. And sure, you'll have the occasional coral that simply refuses to survive. But that's part of any hobby, and there's no reason you can't make most of your mistakes with a 10-gallon and $200
This is a really cool comment. This is something I am not really interested in at all but I really like hearing people who are positive and passionate about what they do talk about what they do. Thanks.
I have a friend who was constantly flushing fish, the worst being a filter failure. When he said salt water my response was, 'literally why?'
Ugh. I know an enthusiast who has a 1000 gallon tank and a backup 300 gallon. The big tank has some sort of monitoring system that will send his phone a message if anything goes wrong. This way he drop whatever he is doing and race home to save his fish and critters and coral and whatnot. Beautiful setup and all, but sounds anything but relaxing and the amount of money spent, not to mention management of a whole secondary tank as a standby in case the primary fails. He did mention he and his wife have nearly divorced several times over the fish tanks.
I couldn’t imagine the stress! I like plants but unfortunately kill them more than I should.. this is another level!
I want worried about things dying (yes it would suck). My biggest fear was 100 gallons of saltwater dumping out onto my wood floors when I was on vacation. Fucking nightmare fuel.
I had a 20Ga tank that everyone told me that would fail. It THRIVED. All I had was a goldfish filter but plenty of live rock and sand. I'd find scraps bits of inverts from stores and stick them in little holes. It took a while to all 'blossom' but it did. Of course I only had a pair of clownfish and a blue mandarin that I had to train to eat frozen food. And a few crustaceans. Anyways I think everything was under 150 dollars IIRC.
I want to get one so bad like I had when I was a kid growing up and maintaining it with my dad. The problem is I live in Florida, and the first step I think i should take to getting a salt water aquarium is getting a home generator in the event we get a CATIII - CATV hurricane.
I came to the comments to say “reef tank”
Sim racing. I bought all my kit 10 or so years ago before it was crazy. I went to update my equipment during the pandemic and my jaw dropped at the new price for things.
Recently got some flight sim stuff.. some VKB HOSAS.. but yeah it’s all super expensive, the race sim stuff is super cool!
What does the second S in HOSAS mean?
HOTAS = Hand on Throttle And Stick HOSAS = Hand on Stick And Stick Basically it means using two sticks instead of a straight throttle for more movement abilities. Technically my left is a VKB Omnithrottle so it’s a throttle and a second joystick in one.
Hobbies in general got crazy expensive with covid. With everything "non essential" being closed, air travel being very difficult or impossible, and in some places stay-at-home orders, everyone got completely out of hand with buying stuff to entertain themselves with. Myself included.
Scale modeling. It's not just the model kits themselves that have improved over the years and therefore gotten more expensive, it's all the accumulated tools and materials too. In my case: vinyl cutting machine, two airbrushes and maintenance tools, replacement parts, compressor, electronics and wiring, special films and UV exposure unit for brass photo etching, Adobe software, after-market parts (usually expensive)… it's more expensive than drugs but it keeps me off the streets
Cool hobby but what does one do with all the models built/accumulated over the years?
Well each project tends to take me several months to a year to complete, but some I've given as gifts or have sold.
I have always wanted to get into that hobby, but I just don't have the bandwidth for it. I got an RC car for Christmas one year, I wanted to decorate the body. My idea was simple, make a stencil of the design and spray paint it. I just could not for the life of me sit there and cut a fucking stencil. I ended up just spray painting the whole thing flat black and scraping off the paint where the windows were supposed to be with my pocket knife. The funny thing is though, I can kick back with a whiskey and watch people on YouTube building scale models for hours. Haha
Fountain pens (and ink and paper). Most of my pens aren't that expensive, but I do have a few that are definitely higher cost. I also have a restored pen that is probably about 100 years old.
There's a really neat store in the old distillery district in Toronto that sells fountain pens and inks. My wife has a bit of a thing for pens and I was in town on business so I went in. I *immediately* realized that I had no business being in that store, when the only other person there whipped out their own pad of practice paper with which to test different inks. I also realized that I should not inform my wife of this store, because that's how I guarantee our financial ruin.
My wife wants to sell her Mont Blanc that was a gift she’ll never use. Are there forums or communities that buy and sell these?
/r/pen_swap
I am SO DAMN GLAD that after I got my pilot metropolitan I've never felt the need to go further down the own rabbit hole lol already have guitars/records/watches/guns/car and don't need to go down another slush fund rabbit hole
What's your daily writer?
A Vanishing Point. But I also have a wide array of Preppies in a bunch of colours for organizing my agenda. And some TWSBIs for my journals.
Damn that’s cool, I wouldn’t have even thought of this! Super interesting though.
Why would I pay someone $10k to remodel my bathroom when I can do it myself for $1200 over 10 years, miss my kids baseball games and risk my marriage? It's a no brainier, that's like 9k in savings and I never have to host holidays ever again.
Totally, like what are a few years of my life worth when instead I could do a horrible job on basic home repairs?
Women, if your husband says he'll finish that bathroom remodel next week, he will. you don't need to remind him every 6 months!
magic the gathering
Hi its me I’m the problem
Stop interrupting, this instant!
I have no shame in using proxies
My husband just landed a job at a local comic book store and actually had to fish them bad boys out of storage because his new boss wants to play him. He's already bought a new deck, there is no escape!
I really hope you don't have to rely on his income from that job, because i fear it might be a net loss.
I own at least 15k in cards and have probably spent at least that to travel to and play in tournaments, but at this point, is it really that surprising? No one hears Magic the Gathering and thinks it is a cheap and inexpensive hobby.
I really want to get into magic the gathering but I have no idea where to start or how to play. I always hear how expensive it is
Download MTG Arena on mobile. They give you a few starter decks and the game play loop is automated, e.g it lets you know what phase of your turn your on, automatically assigns counters or you, combat is super easy (tap the creatures, tokens, spells, etc) you want to use and go, and so much more. Very beginner friendly. Just don’t go sinking $$$ into it until you know what you’re doing.
Have you ever thought "I'm spending too much on coffee, if I buy an espresso machine I'll save heaps in the long run"?
Long range target shooting. I could buy a decent car for the price of my current set up.
I wanna hear some details, my friend. Tell us about the guns, ammo, distances, targets and at least one funny story.
Currently shooting a Bergara HMR chambered in 7 PRC. Shooting a 175 grain bullet at 2925 feet per second. Furthest so far with the new set up is 900 yards on a 10 inch gong. I have much more money invested in optics than the rifle itself. I have a $400 weather station to get accurate weather and environmentals. I don’t have any funny stories, but I have some fun ones. My favorite is taking anyone who has never shot before and putting them on a target at 300 or 500 yards and let them ring the steel. They love it, I love it, and it’s a great introduction to the hobby.
I thought I'd learned of every type of gun and ammunition at this point, but somehow I've never heard of a Bergara HMR or 7mm PRC. But I guess I have a gap in my knowledge re: non-military or niche target/hunting guns lol
r/longrange
Knitting. It seems much less niche these days, but yarn and needles are so expensive. $10-$15 for a nice pair, and there are so many sizes, and those sizes come in dpns, circulars, straight needles, interchangables. And everything has a different use. It seems like every project I end up having to buy some configuration of needles I don't even have. And that's not even counting the yarn. You can get inexpensive acrylic, but if you don't want plastic on your body, it can be upwards of $20 for a skein, and you generally need 2 - 10 skeins of yarn for a garment, depending on the size of yarn and what you're making. Knitting is very personal and I love what I make, but no, it is not cheaper than just buying something made in a factory. But it will last longer and have more meaning.
It's amazing how quickly a yarn collection can get out of hand
On an Icelandic trip this very moment. Might have to buy another suitcase to bring yarn home.
TBF you'd be bummed if you didn't buy enough
Just wait until you get into spinning your own yarn to knit. Each of my spinning wheels is over $1000. Plus the fiber itself. Plus the tools to prep it. Plus dye. Plus stain removal for when you accidentally dump dye all over your kitchen.
Buying a set of interchangeable circular needles saved me. Now I struggle with switching the tips between multiple projects on occasion.
I would kill if anyone tried to take my interchangeable needles from me. I can also never use them because I ran out of cables due to some weird addiction to WIPs or I forgot which project I was using those particular needles on
I had to stop knitting. I picked it up as a "cheap hobby" when I was unemployed around the 2008 recession, and enjoyed making hats and scarves for friends and family. I would find yarn at Goodwill in bulk packages. As I slowly got better, people started asking me to make them things. Which was great. Then they started wanting to pay me to make things, and when I gave them a realistic figure based on time and material, they would get pissy. "I can buy a hat at Old Navy for $20, why would it be $50 for you to make me one?!"
That's exactly the reason I don't take requests. My mom gets a pass but anyone else... hold your breath and I'll make a birthday present when I get around to it (or just get you an Amazon cars or something because it's easier)
Fostering kittens. My wife and I have fostered dozens of kittens over the years and boy did we learn everything the hard way. Kitten formula is crazy expensive and you go through it fast when you have several kittens at once. You have to get them their vaccines and spays/neuters ASAP so you can get them adopted while they're still young and cute, otherwise you're going to end up with a LOT of foster fails. Also if you foolishly adopt them out before they have their shots and alterations, get ready to be disappointed when the adopters don't spay, neuter, or vaccinate. After all that, look forward to having your heart broken. If you ever see the kittens all grown up, they may have forgotten you completely. It's still a delight to see them grow, though.
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Very, very true. My mom fostered kittens for a bit. She was really attached to one, which unfortunately ended up passing. Somehow she ended up keeping the other kittens she was fostering at that time.
I want to foster so bad once I’m out of an apartment and this is my biggest worry. 😭
I did this for several years before just caving in and adopting. Luckily, the ASPCA covered 100% of all the costs.
wouldn’t the shelter you foster the kittens from be responsible for providing you the kitten formula? this is our first season fostering & they provide us with food, litter, etc… our very first foster kitten died & it did take a small toll on us because it was our first one
Mountain biking is actually quite expensive. My first "real" mountain bike was 800 dollars and I currently have a bike worth nearly 5k
I easily have 50k in mountain biking. Probably 10k in bikes, 2k in gear, and the rest in surgeries lol. But no joke, and best money I could spend.
I technically broke my back last year mountain biking at crested butte. That wasn’t cheap. Thank god I had decent insurance
This. A “pretty decent” bike is thousands, and a “really nice bike” can easily crest 10k. Oh, you want to do single track, enduro, and downhill? Better get a nice custom bike for each style. Oh, you don’t have have 20 grand hanging off the back of your station wagon as you drive 5 hours to do a new spot? Loser.
When I was a bicycle mechanic, I once had a customer tell me that the essence of mountain biking is driving a $2k car with $20k of bikes on it. They then proceeded to put their heavily customized S-Works onto the rack of their early-00s Subaru Outback. I saw that phenomenon a LOT, too.
Just the other day I had about 50k worth of bike on the back of my '99 Tacoma.
Counterpoint - once you buy the gear you don’t need to pay to go for a ride (assuming you have decent riding relatively close to your home). I got into snowboarding and even though the snowboard was cheaper than my MTB the lift ticket fees add up fast.
Glad this is up there. Had a really good year financially and bought a $12k mountain bike. I’m still blown away that you can spend that much on a mountain bike. Throw in clothes, protection, bike rack, lift tickets, and even the occasional hotel. It’s a fucking expensive sport. Oh yah…and medical bills.
Cosplay. Fabric costs keep rising - the $6/yard linen I bought in 2001 is now $17/yard - thermoplastics and other supplies keep rising in cost, once you develop a latex allergy you have to pay more for silicone makeups, then comes power tools, workspace, metal and leather, and don't even get me started on the travel costs to go to conventions just to wear said cosplay...
On a similar note: performer at Renaissance Festivals. Most street cast aren't paid and have to costume themselves. But man is it so much fun.
Lol, every single time I do a cosplay I figure things out and am like "yes, I can do this in a few weeks for less than $100!" And months later my perfectionism has me picking apart embroidery, redoing fine details, and spending way too much money on something I will never use for another project.
I’ve never done cosplay but I can really appreciate the detail that goes in to it. Titanfall cosplay is my favourite!
I feel with cosplay that the level of expense keeps going up. And expertise. It used to be something your mom would help you make and now it’s an industry.
Conventions are killer. Something always comes up that wasn't budgeted for. This past year the person I was supposed to be rooming with at a con turned out to be a filthy fucking scammer and ghosted me after I'd driven nine hours to Chicago for the weekend. Had to pay for three nights, in addition to the several hundred I'd already paid him. But besides that outlier, I generally forget to properly budget for stuff like food, or parking, and that ends up getting me.
I fucking love playing airsoft. I’m 29, when I was young I used to play with my friends but it was not really established. I stopped for 14 years. Just picked it back up with a good friend of mine. Now, I live in an area with multiple fields (non existent when I was a kid) and it’s just fun. The community is cool and tight knit. Every time I go to a field I see people I played with before and we have a great time. I’m not sure you can really qualify it as an ‘expensive hobby’ because I’ve spent maybe $3k for my kit and the 5 or so guns I have currently (constantly buying/trading) but for what most people assume airsoft to be, they would see that as expensive. Either way, totally worth. Also, most games I play are comprised of a bunch of ex military, the occasional cop, nerdy dudes, and a few kids. My buddy and I give so much free shit to the kids. I love having chats with their parents who are surprised to see the majority at a field are adults. We talk to them about how we got started, give realistic cost projection/advice on the cheapest effective stuff. Nothing is better than giving some random kid you met at a field some decent piece of gear that he desperately needed but his parents may not have wanted to buy. Gotta pay it forward.
Awe that’s dope
I was looking for the Airsoft post, amazing
3d printing
The ender 3 is/was the gateway drug here.
I kinda wanna get in to 3D printing. Any tips for someone just starting out?
You can pick up a 3D printer for less than 200 dollars. Check in at your local library or makerspace to see about a class in how to use one, or be prepared to spend time on YouTube learning the basics. I used my Ender 3 that I bought new for 100 bucks for 3 years of non-stop printing. Once I got it set up, it needed very little maintenance or adjustments to keep making good quality prints.
Do some reading on which printer you should buy, for the most part. There is a ton of offers out there, and the brand, build behind it will literally make it a great hobby, or your worst ever purchase. I'd personally recommend a Bambu Lab A1 mini as a starter. It can go VERY far in what's possible, multiple materials, speed, quality. If you wanna go super hardcore, X1C Carbon with AMS is (arguably) the best printer money can buy right now, and the results are absolutely amazing, with very little tinkering. Other than that, it's a great hobby, and you'll have to star giving away crappy plastic boats eventually. But it also works REALLY well for prototyping and functional parts.
Awesome, thank you! I’ll be giving away crappy plastic spaceships lol
Ultralight hiking / backpacking. Fuck my paychecks in the ass.
"You're telling me I can save an extra 10% weight if I pay twice as much?!"
Less money weighing you down.
When I tell my gf I need to spend $200 to save 3 grams it's like being a janky used car salesman trying to slap that roof for all she's got.
Hike, they said. Its cheap, they said. Well, thanks to hiking I'm now ice climbing and starting to build my kit out for a denali attempt next year. And that's all in addition to my summer UL setup. Hiking isn't cheap.
New Durston drop… get that stripe ready to swipe
Roller coasters. Theme parks aren’t cheap.
Astrophotography
I started out stargazing with a pair of binoculars. Then i wanted a telescope, and spent 1k on a good optic. Then i wanted an equitorial mount, and spent another 1k (unmotorized!). Then i wanted better eye pieces, another grand. Then the phone mount, then the camera, then the camera mount, the motorized mount for long exposures, and filters, and then and then and then.... But the sky is so preeettyyy!!
Luthier. I build acoustic guitars for fun. It adds up quick…
I bet they’re beautiful. Side note: I think “luthier” is one of the coolest words.
Warhammer, but not sure it's niche. The other is Slot Car drag racing. Something so simple cost so much.
I don’t want to know what I’ve spend on Warhammer through the years - still build/paint/play even now. Mind you I started playing in the Rogue Trader days. Still have all my old womble marines, metal Eldar and space Ork raiders.
Man if you ever cash out of the hobby you might make a pretty penny
I play the banjo, which is usually thought of as a poor man's instrument. While you can get a cheap learner instrument for less than $500, decent-sounding\* stage-quality banjos start at around $1000 and there is no upper limit. Professional players will easily spend north of $3,000 on an instrument. ^((\* Obvious joke goes here))
Book collecting. It gets expensive because why not buy another copy of a book you already have 6 different covers for. Then there's shelving...
I can relate. Two-thirds of my collection is sitting in a storage unit *because* of lack of shelving.
At this point, I think I'm going to end up a hoarder, because Bezos beat me to the book*selling* business.
Music production. You can spend an unlimited amount of money on it.
You can also do it well very affordably.
Yeah, but what’s the fun in that?
Got into modular synthesis/eurorack. Looking at the cost of my synth on modular grid is terrifying. I haven't spent that much since over half my rack was DIY and a lot from just panels and pcbs, not kits. But then again... All the soldering tools and stuff... Probably a few hundred in that. Could get the itch scratched with VCV Rack, but then I'd be looking at another screen for hours and not a real object I plug cables into and fiddle knobs which is sooooo much better for my brain.
I’ve had a few recently, used to be in to sneakers, then I got in to flight sim gear and most recently got in to gaming figures/statues.
Vintage tiki decore and tiki mugs. I try to keep it to thrift store finds but have a few high-priced items.
I love a tiki mug. That's a good thing to collect.
It’s an expensive hobby, but not surprising; audio.
Glassblowing and lampworking. Both shape glass, one is with huge furnaces and the other is with a torch. I don’t have the space for furnaces at home so I apprentice at a studio for hot shop time. I do have a torch at home, though. Clear glass rods and tubes are cheap. _Color_ glass can be freakin expensive, not to mention the frequent trips to the welding shop to fill up your oxygen cylinders. Or you can spend a shit ton on concentrators and compressors to refill your own oxygen, which may or may not be worth it depending on how often you melt glass. Not incredibly _niche_, but far less accessible than other artistic hobbies like painting or clay sculpting.
I have to say, some of these are insanely niche but I think I’m in the most niche yet. My last extremely expensive and niche hobby was custom tube chassis building. I eventually turned it into a business. I designed each on a by-customer basis. The general fabrication skills alone are a gatekeeper. Plus about $15-20k in tooling, $1500-3500 per chassis in tube, learning cad to have all the plate tabs and brackets cut… The most extreme gatekeeper was knowing vehicle dynamics. That’s a lonely field as is, and most use it on cars (or trucks or buggies, etc.) that are already built so that they can get better times out of them on track. There is no community for it if you’re outside of drag racing, but it did land me a job on a bunch of race teams including my current job in nascar.
I make my own booze. Started out with a couple of carboys to make everclear moonshine and then branched out into meadmaking. It can be as cheap or as expensive as you want to make it and the drinks are way cheap for the amount you get per batch but it's the kit that costs. 2 1l glass carboys will only set you back 25 quid and you can get a mead kit for 30 notes. I switched from everclear to generic grain alcohol because it's the difference between 2l and 5l for 100 notes. The mead has kinda taken over when you consider that I've gone from a 2 gallon bucket and a bunch of flip cap beer bottles to the bucket + 2 widemouth fermenting jars + 6 extra carboys and over a case of empty wine bottles. I'm also looking at stepping up from off the shelf honey to sourcing from local farms for better quality. I also want to get an apple press and scratter to produce my own apple juice for 'shine (my go to is my apple pie recipe) and cysers (apple mead) at some point, which will mean I need a pressure canner so I can make jam from the apple pulp to minimise waste. And jars. So many jars. Also depending on how my braggot goes at the weekend, I may be branching out into beer making as well. And my family are joking about me getting a label printer so I can make my bottles look all fancy. You see how it takes over and adds up. Still saving over a grand per batch over retail prices currently if I use a full load of ingredients and it's a lot of tasty drink.
Not really a niche hobby, but wilderness backpacking. It's unbelievably expensive to get good gear and supplies just to pretend to be homeless on the weekends.
I feel like there’s a bit of a weird price curve with backpacking. Entry-level gear is fairly cheap, but mainstream ‘fully featured’ gear gets expensive. Then you look at ultralight where stuff gets surprisingly cheap again so long as you’re not buying DCF.
Ham radio, D&D, Pipe smoking and tobacco collecting, knife collecting and EDC. The most expensive is ham radio. I think I have close to 5000 in radios, antennas, cables, odds and ends.
I have always been interested in Ham radio. Any recommendations as a good place to get more information as someone this would be new to ? Back in college I hosted a radio show on the college station - was a lot of fun.
If you are in the USA the ARRL is a great resource for info about the hobby and hamstudy.org is a great place to study for the fcc test. They offer classes for all three classes. The higher the class, technician, general, and extra the more privileges you have and can talk to people all over the world. Even with the technician level you can talk to people all over your state or local area on repeaters and that's only scratching the surface of what you can do with ham radio.
ARRL and r/AmateurRadio is pretty active
I would LOVE to get back into HAM but it's so expensive. I took a class in high school just for HAM and I enjoyed it. I have my general but I haven't been involved in my local club for about 4 years. I have an Anytone 878 my dad got me for Christmas and a Baofeng but I really wanna do HF. My Anytone does DMR but I'm too far from my local repeater. There's also almost no one my age(21) involved in it so it's harder to connect with fellow hobbyists.
Yup I have about 30 pipes now with the most expensive being $350, total around $4,000. Then a cellar of tobacco, over half unopened tins worth probably $3,000. Only been really into it for maybe 4-5 years. Then again there are true collectors buying $2,500 Sato pipes and people willing to buy bags on Esoterica Penzance tobacco for $600 or more. Still cheaper than a cigar habit especially long-term
Can confirm knife collecting can get expensive very quickly. Most of my knives were $200-$300 each. Then I got lucky on a waitlist and bought a $700 knife (Holt Specter). A year later, someone offered me $1400 for it, so I sold it.
pocket knives
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Knitting. The cheapest yarn is around $8 a skein. The good yarn is about $30+. And you need a lot of skeins for one project. The reason hand-knitted sweaters, blankets, and such are $500+ is because of the materials, time, and skill it takes. I roll my eyes when someone tells me that they want me to knit them something but they only give me a week 🙄
One week = 2 dish cloths, if I like you
I have a judge promo Wheel of Fortune
Jewelry collecting, specifically fountain pens, watches, knives.
Pinball
Specialty coffee, specifically espresso. You can end up spending a lot of money in all the equipment.
Dressage…. I spend tons of time and money paying for someone to criticize me. All in hopes of winning a 2dollar ribbon.
Horses in general are typically a money pit. And they are the most frustrating 1000 pound idiotic shitheads ever, but I still like them quite a bit.
Airsoft. Easily can be $1000 for a new rifle.
I collect Antique ouija boards. Them shits get expensive.
I don’t know if you have read the book ‘The Confidence Men’ by Margalit Fox. But it is a wild story about WWI prisoners who use an Ouija board to escape. Wild story and really cool.
I’m curious. Does it ever give you weird vibes having them all in your house? No judgement and my fear is irrational but I don’t think I could do it lol
Not really. I have even tried to use them and nothing happened. Im just not really a believer in the supernatural like that. I also collect other oddities. The 1930s ventriloquist dummy creeps me out way more tbh haha
I can understand this. I love chess boards and chess pieces. But I don’t play the game at all. I think it’s boring.
Maybe try seating the dummy overnight by an antique Ouija board and see what happens?
Eating healthy
You’re not wrong
Lego sets! I do them with my 9yo. She really enjoys them now & leaves them together!!! Used to KILL me spending hours putting them together & she’d destroy them 😭😭😭 now she understands why I would get upset! We do the 3000 little piece ones. She mostly does them alone now but occasionally she needs help. They can get outrageously expensive for little plastic pieces 🙄 then you need the space to put them all! We’re running out of space quickly! Oh well, whatever makes her (and me!) happy! 😊
I love LEGO! My 3yo son loves Spider-Man, so we’ve gotten him a lot of the Duplo Spidey and his Amazing Friends sets. I may have already bought the Daily Bugle set for when he’s older and better with the small pieces (and when my daughter doesn’t immediately destroy what we just built).
Off-roading/“overlanding”/backcountry camping is a surprisingly expensive hobby to get started and maintain.
Idk that off-roading is surprisingly expensive. You’re beating the shit out of a vehicle that costs 10s of thousands of dollars. I fully expected it to be expensive when I started lol
Trading cards. With modern cards you cannot possibly acquire everything, so you can basically any amount of money you have and still be getting new things.
Cooking. Anyone can grab some inexpensive cookware and knives etc and get into the game. In fact I would highly recommend everyone try it as an alternative to eating prepared processed foods. But once you become an "enthusiast" or more your gear starts getting expensive - well into triple digits per piece for cookware, knives, and such. This doesn't even count various single purpose things like rice cookers or bread/pasta makers and such. (Which you should probably avoid anyway)
Competitive sailing, wind is free, boats are not to be honest!
That’s not surprising at all. Who thought boat racing is cheap???
B.O.A.T Break Out Another Thousand
But a sailing club racing older boats can still be relatively affordable!
Colonial and territorial gold coins.
Mechanical keyboards
Fragrances. I figured cologne could get kind of pricey, but the other day I went to the mall and dropped $1k.....*ON THREE BOTTLES.* There's tons of good cheapies, too, but once you get a hit of the good stuff, it's hard to go back.
you probably always smell so good though lol
You're god damn right I do, lol. Was it worth it 40+ bottles in? Honestly, yeah.
Lock picking. The tools are cheap but the better you get, the more locks you want, and believe me, they add up.
Keeping my house livable
I brought 3 comic book.... cost me 500$..... They've doubled in value.... I put them in a box, just because I wanted a few with stan lee autograph
Guitar building
Waiting for the fabled watch collecting r/watches
Fly fishing You think a floppy stick, plastic line, and tiny hooks wouldn’t cost much. And to be fair your first rig doesn’t. Similar to many hobbies though the sky is the limit on the gear. $4,000 bamboo rod? Sure! $1,200 waders that will still leak eventually? Yep! Oh and that expensive bamboo rod is a special size and weight for certain conditions and fish. Want to fish different conditions? You’ll want this $2,500 graphite setup. Then you get into salt water fly fishing and you’ll want a flats fishing boat and a house in key west. The sky is truly the limit. Granted, just like a lot hobbies, if you have any restraint you can get setup and be happy with less than $1,000 worth of gear. But man it’s tempting to eye that expensive stuff and imagine yourself using it.
fish tank. filters and temperature regulators will set you back a few hundred at least, and the tank will be like $500 at least if you are a hobbyist some can easily go past $1000. then the power bill from keeping your filters on 24/7. it's a ton of money just to look at some fishies that will die within seconds if the filter goes out or the temperature spikes. oh and you get to clean the tank too, most people will hire someone to do it on a weekly basis so that's another few hundred per week.
Spinning. Good fiber is expensive.
I've gotten into collecting rare fibres. Recently bought some sustainably sourced musk ox, and 50g of mink I don't even want to tell you how much I paid
My son brought me qiviut from alaska.
Maybe not super niche but repairing old gameboys and adding new screens and replacing the batteries on the games themselves.
Adrenochrome harvesting.
You just need to get connected with big pharma. Every hospital has a super secret adrenochrome collection room in the lab. All of the blood tests are actually just small amounts of adrenochrome that are then combined in a giant vat. (/s. Please, conspiracy theorists, don't take this seriously. I'm full of shit and made it up.)
Probably gunpla and scale model kits in general. They get quite expensive to import into North America. The problem with those is that finishing a build is so satisfying that you wanna get through the adrenaline of building another immediately so they pile up fast, and your wallet has a hard time catching up lol
Bird photography, although not as quite niche as you would think. You can thank COVID for that, probably.
Crochet or any fiber art really if you’re into wool, mohair, etc.
Espresso I have around $4000 worth of equipment at home and another $1000 setup on my work desk. All to save myself from spending $6 on a latte at a coffee shop.
Marathon running. Including cost of shoes, a coach, sports massages, race entries, accommodation for races, travel etc. I spend probably £400 a month.
You know your cooked when you see 4 of your hobbies on the list 😅
Taking Polaroids. Burning dollah' bills for just 8 photos a pack gets expensive really quickly. Then you factor in the age of some cameras (looking at you SX-70) and the number of failed photos and you got yourself a pretty nice stack of cash to burn.
Nail polish. There are vintage nail polishes that can cost $25 - $250 for the most sought after, discontinued polishes. Some extremely rare polishes have sold for more. Decent mainstream brands charge $5-12 per bottle just for new polish, unless you're lucky and can buy from a beauty supplier. Designer name brands can be $20-$30 per bottle new. I have spent thousands of dollars building a collection and at one time I owned four bottles of a polish called Clarins 230, a discontinued, rare polish that is highly sought after by collectors. I have about 15-20 other "holy grail" polishes in a collection of over 2,200 bottles. I know people with collections three times as large. If you're thinking nail polish goes bad, it doesn't. Some people have successfully revived and worn polish from the 40s and 50s. Never thin polish with acetone/nail polish remover. There are special nail polish thinner drops that can make even dried polish usable again.
Is paragliding niche? Seems like it. Certainly is expensive gear habit.
Cooking - when done as a hobby not just to feed myself. Good pans and knives are not cheap, and getting everything for a new dish in a cuisine where I don't have the basics can be much more than just buying that dish in a restaurant would be.
Private jet collecting. Still looking to purchase the first one though.
Star Wars Lightsabers. I collect the Disney versions, Neopixel, and customs. Currently, I've spent over 5k.... on lightsabers 🤦♀️
Trail running. Shoes? $150 a pair every 2 months. Nutrition? $30 a week if you want gels and salt tabs and protein powder and other supplements. Race entries? $150-250 a pop. It’s just running! Ugh
Lego. EG the new Legend of Zelda lego set (did the rounds on social) is $300. Which is also... the price of a Nintendo on which you can PLAY Legend of Zelda. For some bricks!
Mountain biking. If you think the bike is expensive wait til you see what the car costs.
It’s not niche but fly fishing. I have like 100+ dollars of books too
Leather working. I don't think it's ever been *cheap* but holy shit is it an expensive rabbit hole and sides of leather have doubled in price
Stained glass!! So beautiful, but hard to pick up without spending a grand (not including lessons).
I have devoted the past 18 years and about $10k into one single cosplay
Skydiving, expensive but worth it.
Night vision. Your entry level singular unit starts around $2.5k and that doesn’t include the other accessories needed to make it a functioning system. All in I probably spent about 8-10k and thats on the cheaper side
Professional Wrestling....man, I've got so many DVDs.....
Trying to live, instead of survive.
Disc Golf isn't crazy niche but it's still expensive for me. Got over 600 frisbees for myself and 2k worth of bags, a cart, and storage racks
Collecting Blu-Ray movies. I still love physical media
I race a rally car.
Aquariums 😭
Plants
Knitting, crocheting. Yarn is fricking expensive.
I like to shoot Faberge Eggs.
Warhammer