Asklemmy

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.

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)

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. :)

Cross stitching.

I must have $700 worth of floss a 200$ custom stand and then accessories, I just gave away 82 skeins of off brand that advertised dmc dye standards, but WEREN'T. Don't buy floss from Amazon kids, it's worth it to do a custom order from joanns or Michael's mid project.

It started with wanting to do a fun little Christmas ornament project with the Littles and now I have 7 mid finished projects including a massive LOTR project I've restated 3 times, that has 1 of 12 8×11 pages done on this beast l nearly 3'x2' Aida cloth.

Used to homebrew. At first I thought it'd be cheaper than buying my own beer but it quickly ratcheted-up with grain mills, larger and larger pots and burners, finding places to store the fermenting/aging beer, finding time to brew, finding time to bottle/keg, the clean-up and mess...and, in certain cases, you go through the whole process to find an entire batch has been ruined.

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

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.

Simple, I read. And with the internet I never have to worry about buying books.

Bumping uglies with my SO. We now have multiple children.

Fishing. Who would have thought it was so easy to get addicted to buying various baits and lures.

Hobby electronics started cheep, with a crappy soldering iron (a good precision one was the best purchase ever) and some cheep parts, ended up with a room stuffed with a thousand dollars worth or parts and a few thousand more in test equipment.

keyboards, F-ing keyboards

ITT: Everybody's current/longest hobby.

Mine is boardgames. You start free by playing somebody else's collection, then you get the urge to start your own...

Disc golf.

Discs cost only $15-20 new, used ones can be only a few bucks, you only need one or a few to play, and most courses are free.

In reality, you keep buying new discs. And a bag to carry them. And more discs. And a bigger bag. Then a home basket. And a net to practice in. And more discs. Then a rack to hold the extra discs you can’t bag…. It adds up!

Every. Single. One.

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!

Fish tank.

Great post OP!

Firearms.

It was fairly inexpensive before the pandemic. But since it's been a nightmare of price gouging.

It's also one of those hobbies where buying one thing leads down a rabbit hole of spending.

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.

Thinkpads.

Camping and camping gear. It can be so cheap and easy, but when you start buying high end gear it adds up quick.

Not to mention the different types of camping, backpacking, car camping, glamping, etc. Car camping “overlanding” gear is awesome, but so expensive.

Film photography. Holy shit did that add up.

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

I bought a $20 Stanley sharptooth saw and a few second hand chisels.

See the banner on !woodworking@lemmy.ca

And I haven't even bought any stationary tools 😅

When I first got into my hobby (DJ) I thought I only needed to pay into the set up cost of buying equipment (turntables, mixer, sound), but I eventually learned that I had to keep buying records because I couldn't just mix the same two recorded forever, and that got expensive.

Beekeeping. It gets expensive very fast and doesn't seem to ease year on year

Bonsai