For example, I’m sure the average joe doesn’t know just how expensive calligraphy pens can be, or how deep the rabbit hole goes on video game speedruns.
3D printing! You can start out cheap but you can get STUPID expensive, and it’s the biggest most meandering rabbit hole I know of
I’ve been amazed at how cheap it’s become since I built my first few printers. I spent thousands building printers that aren’t half as good as a $300 printer today.
3D printing can be expensive, but I disagree that it is stupid expensive.
Photography can start with your smart phone and get expensive in a hurry.
Digital SLRs begin at $2k and the lenses range from $400 to $3,500. The more you try and break into high end photography the more insane the costs are.
I probably dumped about $10k into cameras and realized I still wasn’t that good at it. That’s the painful thing. Realizing your skill doesn’t match your fancy tech.
But there is a low entry point with this one. I bought a used Canon Powershot that has a 50x optical zoom. Only stores JPG. Can’t swap out the lense. But it was $200 and now I can zoom in on birds. Since it’s digital I don’t have to pay for film or prints.
DSLRs start at like $400-500. Bought a Nikon D5300 years ago and the part that makes the biggest difference is the lens.
Yes, I should have written full frame DLSRs
That phenomenon is known as GAS, Gear Aqcuisition Syndrome. I sold all my shit and just have a 1" sensor compact now. I take a lot more pictures ironically.
What is challenging in photography? Point and shoot.
What is challenging in art? Just put a pencil on paper and move it around.
What is challenging in photography?
To get the shoot you want it to be in the best possible quality.
composition
Magic: the gathering.
There’s several different styles of play known as “formats”.
The Cheapest being “Standard”. Which is the latest 3-5 sets released. The deck of 75 card deck can cost upwards of £500.
Then the most popular format, modern, which is the last 20ish years of release. The average deck there can be upwards of £1,500.
Then there’s legacy and vintage where decks are in the high 4 figures and some even in the 5 figures.
My roommate is big into magic, but he refuses to spend a lot of money on it. He makes counterfeit cards of whatever he wants and gets a deck custom printed for $40. He’s also part of a discord group that makes cool fake cards or changes artwork on existing ones.
They’re not allowed to have the official back but since he uses sleeves no one can tell. He’s really up front about it and talks about how he couldn’t get into the hobby or make the decks he likes if he had to pay for real cards.
There’s nothing wrong with proxying. It only becomes an issue if you’re playing in a tournament, or your opponent insist on using real cardboard since they probably spent a lot and so everyone should as well.
Absolutely based.
Don’t forget commander, which a lot of places claim is now the most popular format. Pre-constructed commander decks can cost as little as $20-40 and competitive commander decks can easily go into the thousands.
The game also has a very high skill ceiling. I think that’s one of the main reasons why magic has such a broad age range to its player base. There’s plenty of weird lines of play, from strange card / rule interactions to weird deck themes no one else would think of.
Isn’t “pauper” cheaper than standard?
Also don’t forget that when the meta changes that expensive deck’s value can change (usually for the worse)
I quit playing in 1996. It wasn’t too rare to have a $2000 to $3000 deck even back then. And that’s when every card store had a Black Lotus for sale without having to notify their insurance company.
I always felt like Modern was cheaper in the long run than Standard. Spending hundreds of dollars every few months on a new set didn’t speak to me. Whereas I could buy a few cards here and there to upgrade me modern decks.
I’d assume a lot of people sell/trade as the next set rotation is coming around no? I’m not sure how card economy works in magic but in yugioh today’s meta is tomorrow’s budget, surely there’s people that want to buy in play in non rotating formats
Warhammer 40k
Comparably, Gunpla also goes hard on costs (though imo its more for associated materials like paint then the models themselves, which can be pricy but tend not to be.) and the quality of some of what folks put out there is staggering, as shown in the 10th Gunpla Builders World Cup
I appreciate that link, thanks. I have built a few, haven’t even painted though. I just like building stuff I don’t need glue for.
Those builds remind me of a guy I worked with that back in the day would be a model builder for cars that the model companies hired to build the model for the box covers before they mostly started using photos of real cars. He was just so talented. Even bashed some kits so they could be molded to create new models for some companies. One of them was when they wanted an old woody station wagon so he basically took 10 different kits and created it for their mold.
Gymnastics. The skill part is obvious but monetarily its more than i expected. I thought it would be like going to a regular gym but its usually much more expensive to use the gyms and thats if you can find a time slot where adult males can train.
I don’t think the average Joe would know how expensive Warhammer 40k or model trains are.
Is it cheaper if you 3d print your own minis?
I’m not sure if that’s viable for 40k. You might not be welcomed to play with fake minis. You could surely do that with friends though.
My understanding is that you’re only allowed to play what you own, no stand ins.
It is a bit more complicated than that. Basically, people you play with won’t care so long as you’ve painted it to a reasonable standard and there isn’t some massive size difference that’d give some notable advantage or disadvantage compared to official minis. The same is true of official ones where people are picky about unpainted plastic but its likely more a thing with printed ones. Independent game stores also won’t really give a shit since you’re likely buying paints and stuff from them anyway.
GW stores are the ones that will have a problem with it, along with tournaments they host. I have heard stories of people getting shit for using forgeworld stuff (which is GW’s speciality site basically, they sell the really big models and some more niche like, regiment-specific stuff) in stores because it isn’t something the stores themselves will specifically sell. This is because of corporate policy though, no one wants to lose their job.
Onepagerule is cheaper.
Rock climbing. To start out you basically just need $150 worth of shoes and some $5 chalk. Trad climbing or big wall climbing can be 5 figures and a dozen years worth of experience. And the skill ceiling is probably obvious, but it’s become an Olympic sport for a reason.
I think rock climbing has a fairly interesting cost curve, you’re right.
- Bouldering in the gym: Membership fees, shoes, chalk bag.
- Bouldering outside: Crash pad, gas to crag, shoes, chalk bag.
- Sport climbing in the gym: Rope, belay device, shoes, chalk bag, membership fees.
- Sport climbing at the crag: Rope, belay device, quickdraws, shoes, chalk bag, gas to crag
- Trad climbing: Rope, belay device, rack, shoes, chalk bag, gas to crag
And then if you add ice climbing and mountaineering you’re really screwed. Thousands of dollars in goretex, travel, supplies, rescue kits, avalanche training, etc
Mountaineering was the next level I couldn’t afford to join my friends on.
Sim racing. An entry level wheel cost 100, an okay one 300 and the most expensive I’ve seen is 100,000
https://www.f1authentics.com/products/red-bull-simulator-championship-edition
Same thing with flight sims
If you can buy a decent car for the cost of your sim racing rig, it’s time to evaluate.
I know people with real race cars, it’s lots of breaking down and hitting things for big money.
A full sim rig with VR and motion is probably cheaper with the same brain chemicals, and you can just do it whenever.
I’ll do the reverse - I think most people would expect homebrewing beer to be quite hard to get started with, but for $50 you can get everything you need to start making a really quite good beer, and save money at the same time (homebrewed beer is usually much cheaper than store bought)
If you want to get started search for “brew in a bag” and buy a kit beer mix. You’ll need a handful of equipment like a brew bag and fermenter, but that stuff is really cheap.
Then you can indeed go down a massive rabbit hole of refinements, but it just amazed me that the first beer you make will already be a good one.
Playing music has basically no skill ceiling.
And you can get by without a lot of equipment. Though a used audio interface and an old laptop at least is nice to have.
True. But also equally true if you do buy equipment and indulge in every temptation. There is absolutely egregiously expensive gear in all shapes and forms.
Oh you don’t need to tell me that 😔
Woodworking and collecting old tech. Both my hobbies / crafts, both started very cheap and very little, today in my workshop there’s upwards 60k only in machines, not counting the tools, if you want to have a working computer from the 60s or even 50s, you’ll pay. And pay and pay. My advice: collect old cars. Or yachts. Cheaper :)
Woodworking is as expensive as you want it to be. Other than a good table saw (which some people would argue isnt necessary for true hand tool fanatics) equipment just makes things easier and there’s almost always another way.
Maybe it is well known, but home brewing. You start out with a couple of buckets and a stockpot, next thing you know you’re spec-ing out a 10hL brewery with your mates. There is always “just one more” thing that you need to buy to make the perfect beer.
At least with brewing beer, it’s offset by the price of beer. It costs about half the cost of a commercial corny keg to brew 5 gallons.
If you’re disciplined and brew frequently (and drink unhealthy amounts of beer,) you can pretty easily break even or save money. I calculated something like 10 brews to break even on my set up and didn’t buy anything extra until after 10 brews. You can get great deals on used stuff too since people frequently get sober and drop out of the hobby and liquidate all their equipment. This is the dark side of the hobby.
Kinda dorky but I have a spread sheet tracking all of my brewing expenses. I also calculate how much that beer would have cost of I bought it and subtract my brewing expenses from it. The goal is to keep that number from being negative. Right now I’m pretty close to 0 because I upgraded my temperature control abilities to brew lagers.
You sound like you were far more restrained than I. I still went out to sessions at the assorted local craft places to see what was new (this was in the early 00s) while brewing an ever increasing amount. I has massive crates of bottles I was giving out and eventually keykegs. Finally I gave up and got a job at an actual brewery. No regrets, but also, so many regrets.
Mechanical watches. Most people don’t understand just how expensive they can get, outside of the ones with diamonds all over them, nor why they’re so expensive. Most people also don’t understand how expensive it is to be allowed to buy certain models, depending on the model and the dealer you’re buying from. Also, watch repairs and regular servicing of mechanical watches is something most people don’t consider, and the price of tools if you want to do it yourself can be very expensive and require a lot of skill.
Fancy watches are just jewelry, so just like all jewelry there’s no cap on how much money someone will sell it to you for.
Hobby CNC
You can get a little table top router and some simple software for a couple hundred bucks. You can go deep into it. Building a custom machine, writing your own post processor, dialing in you CNC to insane levels of accuracy and precision, adding a 4th axis, engineering parts and projects, it goes on. It basically combines robotics, design engineering, and manufacturing engineering all in one hobby.
4th axis? X, Y, & Z with rotation along one of the axis?
Or are you milling time cubes?
Yes, rotation. It’ll allow you to do diagonals instead of just straight down. Although milling time cubes sounds awesome
5D milling is where it’s at. No, it’s not a joke.
To piggyback off this, hobby machining in general. You can buy a small lathe pretty cheap but add some decent tooling and oh you need a very fancy tool you don’t have? Hand over more cash. You want to make a part that won’t fit in your small beginner lathe? Time to fork out for a bigger more expensive one. Oh a mill would be better for that part? Those kidneys could get a basic mill. Oh you need more fancy tooling for the mill now…
Sorry what’s CNC?
Welding.
The thing is, it’s a skill that pays for itself if you have enough projects in mind. I’ve paid for my equipment a hundred times over by building things that would have cost a hell of a lot of money to have done.
What kind of things have you built?
For my jeeps: cargo rack, front and back bumpers, pull out drawers, rock rails, body work, frame repair. Built a boat trailer, fix broken equipment, I’ve lost count of the things, frankly.
I think welding is a life skill like woodworking/carpentry/plumbing/electrical, they all pay for themselves as hobbies if you decide you aren’t spending your life in front of a TV.
