The first 2 I can see being pricey, but that bug shouldn’t be too costly to maintain, is it? Would think there are plenty of parts around.
One reason I liked my Corvair - parts were cheap and readily available. And I preferred keeping it as a “10-footer”, so I didn’t have to worry about every raindrop and parking lot.
I thought it was a video, but I looked through my YT history and don’t see it. I’m guessing it was through @minor7flat5 and his always helpful posts. If it was a video I watched, hopefully he can correct me. I watched quite a few of his videos so I might be missing this one.
I responded in that thread and can answer questions over there. I couldn’t go back to the way I used to do things. I love my iPad and foot pedal!
Are they standard hearing protection with speakers or are they like Bose active noise canceling headphones?
I remember as a young pup in the 80s working in a mom-and-pop circuit board shop in afternoons in high school–I broke the ear pieces off of a set of Walkman headphones and tucked them inside my hearing protectors to create poor-man’s built-in-speakers.
Side note: I had to keep the tape player in a zip loc baggie to keep the fiberglas dust from ruining it. I had a couple of tape players give up the ghost over the months anyway. My lungs feel itchy even thinking about that–but not as itchy a my liver feels when I remember the chemicals from the plating line!
Here you go: Cool tools…how working musicians get away from those heavy binders of music
Go give that sad little video another view–less than 50 over the year 
To be fair, those kinds of “how to” videos really are all about the long game. Nobody watches a “JMJ Mustang Setup” video for entertainment; they watch it because they searched for it.
I do that kind of video to help the next guy, and it worked!
They are ear muffs with speakers. And I keep the volume low. My tinnitus is bad enough I try not to make it worse and that includes playing with my very loud rock band. Two guitars, one bass (me) and a hard pounding drummer.
I thought I watched a video about it and that’s it! I appreciate you did that video as it helped me move beyond printed sheets of music. Those printed sheets couldn’t keep up, and now I can show up and play any of our songs. BTW, of those thumbs up, one of them was already mine. 
My primary avocation is music, but these days I’m not spending much on it. In past years, though, the totals for sheet music, workshops, lessons, gear, shows (on most of my gigs I didn’t break even let alone cover the band), etc. could get up there. Right now I’m neither studying nor performing, so my only music-related costs involve going out to hear other people.
My current/active hobby is building Lego sets: the ones I assembled in 2025 cost a combined $6500 (though that total includes a $1000 hard-to-find retired set). Another $400 in sets was delivered yesterday. I definitely have a probl That’s definitely where most of my disposable income goes.
Watch collection. The cost can vary from stupidly expensive to actually quite modest. Most of my more recent additions to my collection have been watches that I’ve assembled from components that are sourced from various suppliers. That does allow me to control the costs better than buying whole watches, and is quite satisfying when producing a unique watch of my own design. A typical self made watch might cost in the area of $150 to $250. A watch of the same quality ready made would cost 2 to 4 times.
I play D&D and other games.
Pretty damn cheap. A new $30 book once a year.
My principal hobby is soaring: flying sailplanes (aka gliders - which despite the name are distinct from hang gliders). This definitely ranks as expensive: a decent glider can cost over $100k (but they tend to hold their value well). An aerotow launch (typically one per day for an experienced pilot) is ~$65.
Minor hobbies include 3-D printing, birdwatching and Via Ferrata (basically, hiking on a vertical cliff with a safety harness). None of these costs more than ~$1000/year.
Collecting expensive watches doesn’t impress me at all. Making your own watch is amazing. Do you have pictures?
Yes, you are correct. The maintenance costs are pretty low for the bug. But the up-front cost of buying it was fairly steep for something that is basically just a hobby/toy.
That was why I bought my Corvair. Bought it fully running in 2010 for $2500. COuldn’t believe I could get a classic car that cheaply!
I see a couple mentions of 3-D printing. What does that mean? (I know what a 3D printer is, or at least I think I do. What are people using them for that would be considered a hobby?)
Wow, that’s a good price! Do you still have it?
Sailing is a darned expensive hobby. The cost of the boat, the cost of upkeep, the cost of the grossly overpriced marine gadgets that one is always buying, docking charges, the cost of haul-out and winter storage – it all very quickly adds up. My boat-owning days are now pretty far in my past, though. Even my wealthy friend, who had a fair-sized motorboat, decided he could no longer afford to continue the hobby when the boat developed some significant structural problem. There’s a good reason those things, whether sail or motor, are referred to as bottomless money pits.
But cruising some the scenic parts of the Great Lakes, like Georgian Bay and the North Channel, made for some enjoyable and spectacular vacations. The pic below was taken after we anchored for the night in a little inlet somewhere off northern Georgian Bay.
A 3D printer basically builds an object out of plastic in layers, hence “printing”. You can just download things to print (which is why you might not think of it as a hobby) but you can also create your own things to print using 3D software. The only limitation at that point is your imagination and your 3D modeling skills.
Some 3D prints are utilitarian, like creating a holding device for your razor so you can stick it to your bathroom wall.
Some are more clearly hobby things, like making robot parts (if you are into robotics as a hobby), making models of things like Star Wars characters and ships, making movie prop replicas (like Decker’s gun from Blade Runner), custom chess pieces, all sorts of things.
I personally have an Ender 3 Pro printer. It’s a low-cost printer designed for hobbyists like me. I don’t use it much, unfortunately. Too many other hobbies and not enough time.
There’s a bit of an up-front expense for the 3D printer, but materials and supplies are fairly cheap in the long run.
Only if they also consider you a hobby.
Playing guitar, it’s theoretically free, but the up-front costs are fairly high.
Running road races is pretty cheap compared to some other hobbies. Entry fees for major marathons (~$250) and for half marathons ($100-150?) are considerably higher than they were even 10 years ago, but it’s not like I do that many races. Another expense is shoes; I buy 2 or 3 pairs a year for about $160 each. Otherwise, I don’t spend much at all except if I travel for a race.
Nah - I wish. Constant source of friction between my wife and me, and when things changed such that housing it was difficult, it went. I miss it nearly every day…
Another woodworker here. I don’t have any expensive tools, my most recent acquisitions include a $169 benchtop drill press from Harbor Freight, and a battery-powered 6” circular saw, with battery and charger, for $99 on sale (basically, I paid for the battery and they threw the saw in for free). As others have mentioned, I find decent wood the most expensive part of this hobby, even decent plywood. I live in San Francisco, and the nearest hardwood dealer is over in Berkeley. I don’t get there very often. I have learned gradually that I don’t need to sail through a project as if I were making a video, I can take the time to stop and think and measure again and think again before cutting. I don’t have a good visual imagination so I almost always work from plans that I have bought. Plans are not expensive, and so I don’t always use them after purchase. Yesterday when cleaning up the shop I turned up a trove of old unused plans wherein I might find something I want to build.
Another hobby is bookbinding. This is only expensive if you feel the need to have large equipment that you might find in a bindery, such as a board shear or a guillotine for trimming edges of text blocks. I think possibly various gilding enhancements might also be expensive, the tools more than the gold leaf. None of that interests me. Right now I am on a project of making 30+ A5 size notebooks using some interesting cover paper that I found and bought.
Finally, there is fountain pens. I spent 5 years grabbing up bunches of pens, vintage and new, expensive and not so much. Towards the end I was only going for fancy expensive modern pens. When I forced myself to stop buying, because I had over 400 pens, I realized that my real hobby was acquisition, and I didn’t really care all that much about the pens. Now all I want to do is to sell them, which is a right pain to do if I want to recover even 75% of my costs.