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.
Great post OP!
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.
Watercolor.
Children play with $5 palettes. Apparently I pay $20 for a single color tube.
Sex toys. My collection is worth more than my car.
That’s one hell of a depreciating asset ya got there.
Most of them are high end silicone toys from Bad Dragon and Mr Hankey’s toys and hold their value quite well. I purchased around 80% of them on the used market and can turn around and sell them for about the same amount so the depreciation hit is minimal.
TIL, there’s a market for used sex toys!
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.
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
You realize it’s an addiction when you intend to do 5k. Realize after that Strava didn’t work properly on your watch and then you end up doing a second 5k because the first 5k didn’t count.
Finish marathon
Legs on fire
Garmin says you only ran 25.6 miles
Have to run another half mile at race pace (so you don’t ruin your stats) to make sure you get credit for a marathon
I was running for a couple of years , and my knee started to give me problems.
I went to an orthopedic Dr, and his advice was to take up swimming and if I wanted to keep running that I should hold on to his business card because someone needed to pay for his kids’ college.
I stopped running soon after and avoided surgery for a decade, but it still caught up with me. Knees are definitely cheap with for-profit healthcare.
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.
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.
Sounds like your hobby isn’t actually reading, but collecting books
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 :)Ketamine
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!
To be fair, Plex/home theater stuff is so stinking fun tho.
That it is. What I really like is seeing 5 users or so all active at the same time… That makes it worth my $.
If it weren’t for me being able to have friends use it, I am 99% certain my wife would kill me for spending so much on it.
Selfhosting media
PLANTS, LOTS OF THEM
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”.
