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.
Aquariums. It’s shocking how much money you can spend on fish and how easily you can kill them all if you don’t know what you’re doing. Even worse, if you’re really into it, you can’t have just one aquarium.
We had one for years. I cleaned it one day just like I had done a hundred times before. The next day the water turned cloudy and all our fish died. Sold the tank and cabinet a few days later. Having an aquarium is a 2nd job.
As much as I’d love to have a nice live coral aquarium to look at in my living room, fuck everything about taking care of one.
Keyboards are generally known about, but the ergo part of it is a rabbit hole within the rabbit hole. Some people literally design, 3D print, wire up, solder and program one-off keyboards because they don’t like the ones made by other people.
Oh hey, you called? https://imgur.com/a/INk7FzQ
Maybe not as expensive as the others, but crochet/knitting/sewing all start off fairly cheap, and then the next thing you know you’re offering to service old men behind a Joann’s fabric because you need this particular fabric and you need an entire bolt of it, and it’s the one fabric in the entire fucking store that isn’t on their amazing buy one get 73 free sale for the week.
Yep! Especially buying like ethically sourced yarn and stuff. It’s why I buy acrylic yarn because buying yarn from local dyers is difficult as.
I feel like a lot of people might think miniature building/painting could be easy - or at least quick.
It isn’t.
I don’t think the average Joe would know how expensive Warhammer 40k or model trains are.
Racing drones.
It turns out when you crash your $500 drone into a brick wall at 50mph, shit breaks and you get to spend more money if you want to fly it into another wall
This has both, really. People also have no idea how hard it is to pilot the quick, expensive little bastards. You’re gonna spend a good chunk of time in the simulator before you can do anything with a real one. But hey, at least you can fix them, unlike DJI stuff where at the smallest little thing it’s bricked.
Oh definitely. DJI is good for photography and some types of video, but that’s about it. I’d avoid DJI for just about everything else.
Telescopes
Skydiver here.
It’s not just money, it’s not just skill that makes you a successful jumper.
It’s a certain type of attitude and the ability to think when you’ve aimed yourself at a planet. Not everyone can do it. To be blunt, there is a large part of the population that shouldn’t do it, because they have terrible decision making ability.
As far as money, I went through the student program in the mid 90’s and it cost me about $1200, if I recall correctly. My first rig, used, was $4000. My second rig, new, was just over $8000. I have 4500 jumps most of which I paid ~ $20 each for. I don’t want to do that math.
The best decision I can think of to make when someone asks me if I would like to jump out of a perfectly good airplane and plumet toward the ground at high speeds would be to say “No thanks.”
Former skydiver here. The best response I ever heard to the “why would you jump out of a perfectly good airplane” question was, “you should see the planes we jump out of.”
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Do you really need a good plane when you are all skydivers? It doesn’t even need to land for you to do what you came for.
Warhammer 40k. I heard about the game years ago and thought it sounded pretty cool. Didn’t realize that unlike D&D, it’s not something generally played without minis. And it’s a massive war game. So you need a lot of minis. And it’s a massive war game. So you need to know how to strategize or you’re gonna suck. High cost and high skill.
I just read the lore instead. 🤷🏻♂️
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.
You can get started homebrewing cider or mead for like $50, especially if what you’re brewing isn’t carbonated so you can just store it in whatever. You can also buy home garage versions of fully automated brewing and canning lines that will run you into the tens of thousands, not accounting for consumables. It escalates fast.
I imagine taxidermy is super difficult
The competition is indeed stiff.
Modular synths, eurorack is where you find the most accessible modules than the other formats. Sometimes you go and spend 600€ in a module without batting an eye.
Also you have to count the case, patch cables, etc.
It gets expensive quickly if you can’t fight the GAS (gear acquisition syndrome)
Also it is a musical instrument so you need to practice many hours to play it affectively.
It is really cool, I do enjoy myself playing with my modular, but would love to have more time to spend with it.
From what I’ve seen, modulars tend to attract people that love to tinker but aren’t necessarily very musical. They spend 30k and years on their setup but when they actually play something it’s just space soup. There are exceptions of course, some respected producers do use them, but that’s just my casual observation.
Absolutely. I love audio design, synthesis and making music, but I have rarely released anything. It took a long time for me to realize and accept that I do this for my own entertainment and not to be a successful musician. Its just a hobby.
And there’s nothing wrong with that! Music has also always remained something I did for fun, I have a different creative field as my day job and I don’t want to do the same with music nu-hu.
Coffee, specifically espresso. While you can technically get started with a couple hundred bucks and a ton of sheer will, the rabbit hole is intense, with proper espresso machines often costing well into the thousands, and grinders matching it.
Ironically, getting into cheap espresso equipment is probably more costly than never getting into it, as there’s always something better and marginal costs come into play.
I was going to say it’s a lot less expensive if you don’t need espresso. An aeropress is around $40, I bought mine nearly two decades ago, and still use it daily!
…then I realized I spent $160 on the grinder right next to it. So I’m not totally immune. :P
You can get a French press for $10 - $20. Get the beans from a coffee shop and ask them to grind it.
You now have great coffee for a month.
Probably more well known but with the whole ‘live edge’ fad from a couple years ago now, some people don’t realize you can spend upwards of 20-30k on a single piece of some types of raw lumber.
I feel like woodworking is one of those traditional “this hobby is expensive” things, but I was shocked by just how hard it is to do some things (like hollow out a bowl-shaped divot in a piece of wood) without the proper tools. And the proper tool is sometimes a single hook knife that’s $89 dollars.
You can get 8 foot of pine from any hardware store for $10, but if you want to do anything other than cross cut that pine to different lengths, you’re going to need to drop some cash.
Of course, the skill ceiling for woodworking is enormous.
Woodworking can get crazy expensive, but like most hobbies, you can get into it gradually for relatively low cost. I started with a cordless drill and a circular saw, then gradually bought used tools and restored them. If I were to buy everything new in my shop, it would easily be $15-20k, but I’ve spent maybe $2k over 5 years. The most I’ve spent on any one tool was a $400 miter saw a few months ago on sale, almost everything else has been stuff that’s older than me or inexpensive tools that work just as well as pricier options.
Good hardwood is fucking expensive though. I found a local mill where I can get cherry for $4/bdft or walnut for $5.50/bdft (bdft = board foot, volumetric measurement equivalent to 12"x12"x1"). Somewhere like Woodcraft charges $15-18/bdft for walnut, which is $60+ for a 6" wide, 8ft long, 1" thick board.
ETA: It does annoy me when every woodworking video comment section is bombarded with complaints about how expensive tools are. Yes, Sawstop and Powermatic are obscenely expensive. A DeWalt job site table saw is more than enough for most hobbyists starting out. So is a used saw you can get for $100 or less. It’s very easy to blow through $20k outfitting a shop, but it’s also very easy to outfit a shop with old, quality tools for a fraction of that price. This is what I’ve spent over five years
- 6" Jet jointer from 1973: $240
- 12" Parks planer from 1943-1986 (no idea on exact date): $200. Used a 13" Woodtek lunchbox planer for a few years before this. I got that for free because they don’t make linkage gears for it anymore, and I was able to 3D print replacements.
- DeWalt job site table saw, new in 2018: $325
- Wen drill press, new in 2019: $70
- Wen scroll saw, new in 2019: $60
- harbor freight miter saw, used: $80 (fuck this thing, would never cut square no matter how much I tried to tune it)
- DeWalt compound sliding miter saw, new 2023: $400
- Harbor freight lathe, new 2020: $150-200 (don’t remember exactly)
- shaper from 1978 + $2k in tooling: $40 at auction
- 7-10 various hand planes, all used from eBay or marketplace: $80
- knockoff 14" delta bandsaw from late 80s: $40
- harbor freight dust collector, new 2023 (gift): ~$250-300
- slow speed bench grinder, new 2021: $90
- various hand saws, 2016-2023: probably $100
- various chisels, new 2016-2023: ~$120
All in, $2,100 over 5 years. I sold ~$1,500 worth of random projects in that time, and gained a ton of enjoyment from it.
Even if you do go big and spend a lot of money on tools, as long as you have disposable income and you’re not forgoing your/your family’s basic needs, there’s nothing wrong with spending money on things you enjoy. It’s ok to enjoy things.
