Amateur Rocketry. Sure it starts out with those little Estes rockets and the $2.00 engines, but fast forward a few years later and you’re building eight foot long monsters made of kevlar and carbon fiber and packed full of electronics, chutes and misc pyrotechincs. It’s got a motor in it that costs $300 by itself. The motor might be reusable but the $150 reloads are not. You’ve designed it with software that costs as much as a reload and you track it in flight with GPS, transmitters, receivers and antennas that cost more than some cars. Speaking of which, the custom fitted out trailer that carries all this crap around cost nothing compared to amount of money spent traveling all over the country to launch events. To top it off, you have a custome built, fully licensed and inspected explosives storage magazine in your backyard and your life is open to BATFE inspectors anytime they chose to drop by. If your hobby is watching your money literally go up in smoke, rocketry is for you.
Amateur radio. It is possible to listen in to shortwave broadcasts with a few dollars worth of components and a wire hanging out the window. For a few dollars more you can build a tranmitter capable of putting out a few watts with which to connect to someone on the other side of the globe. But it doesn’t stop there does it? Now you have an entire detached ham shack housing several multi-thousand dollar modern transceivers. These transceivers feed your antenna farm consisting of several three hundred foot towers topped with expensive yagi antennas. You bought this little farm and uprooted your whole family to move here just so you’ve have room and be outside of any antenna restricted areas. Hell, postage costs to keep up with QSL obligations alone could support a less expensive hobby like, let’s say, boating.
There was a thread where I explained the Diagram for all of this but I can’t find it - grr!
Okay - here goes: The WordMan Shlep/Toy Pursuit Matrix™ - bear with me here…
Draw a two-by-two grid on a piece of paper
Label the X-Axis (bottom of the grid) “Toy” and label the left side “Low” and the right side “High”
Label the Y-Axis (left side of the grid) “Shlep” - and label the bottom “Low” and the top “High”
Now - if you are into, say, windsurfing, you are in the upper-right quadrant because you are High Toy (lots of stuff to get for windsurfing) and High Shlep (you gotta drive a ways to get to a good spot). If you like to read at home and have a library nearby, you are in the lower-left quadrant, being clearly Low Toy and Low Shlep.
I think what many posts hear are acknowledging is that pretty much any hobby can be nudged / forced bodily over into High Toy. Some, like a salt-water aquarium, must start out High Toy, but others, like me and guitars, don’t have to be High Toy - I just prefer it that way!!
So - is your hobby High Shlep and/or High Toy by its very nature, or do you nudge it that way for your own reasons?
Okay - I am going to subscribe to this thread so I can hold onto this.
My husband’s friend describes money as Boat Units. One Boat Unit is $50. Substitute the adjective of your choice.
What do you mean you spent $250 on a new set of bed linens? That’s five Camera Units!!
*
Can we go out to dinner for our anniversary? We won’t order any wine; we should be able to keep it under two Golf Units!*
Look at that dent! That’s going to cost at least eight Knitting Units to fix!
WordMan, you first posted that in a thread about why the hell anybody goes surfing, I think.
You’re right, though. Running should be low toy, low schlep. The Marine Corps Marathon is several states away and I just ordered some new running clothes to help me train for it.
THAT’s where it was! I tried to think of words and usernames from that thread but kept coming up with a goose egg!
And yeah - you are totally working the High Toy angle on your marathon (tons of luck with that, by the way!)
And **Sigmagirl **- oh yeah, I look at every purchase in terms of guitars. Whaddya mean I gotta get the kids Guitar Hero?! I could get a real guitar - or at least part of one! And, within Musician (but mostly Guitar) circles, there is even a name for our sickness: G.A.S. - Guitar (or Gear) Acquisition Syndrome. As in: Oh, man, I am so GASsing for that Nocaster Relic Tele!!
IME, few hobbies do a better job of “upselling” their participants. In theory, you can keep it simple and tolerably cheap, but the percentage of active cyclists who do seems awfully small. A lot of companies have had serious success with “Let’s make it just a bit neater and a LOT more expensive - that’ll sell.”
Also, cycling is one of those hobbies where weight counts so if they can save a few ounces off a part ( bonus for making it out of some obscure alloy) they can sell you a little less for a whole lot more.
Hmmm, definitely Low Toy, but it does sound like it would be High Shlep - or at least the sound we’d hear would be something like “shlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlepshlep”
I agree. If really, you’re in it for riding, all you need is a $200 used bike with another $100 for tune-up/parts and a $30 helmet (that assumes you can get advice on what’s worthwhile to buy used, but also assumes you can’t tune it up yourself). I can respect people who want to buy cycling shoes and clipless pedals too, but I get by without them.
But it’s definitely a sport that’s into pushing the high-toy factor. A $9,000 bike and $6,000 of lycra/racing socks/cycle computers/unobtanium alloy parts won’t really turn you into Lance Armstrong, but it doesn’t stop people from trying.
Oh yeah - weight reduction brings out The Ridiculous in many hobbies. Witness thisfrom guitar land: a high-end maker of Stratocaster-style guitars will let you buy a titanium tremolo block for $360 (a tremolo block is a hunk o’ metal that Strats have as part of their whammy bar assembly - normally made of base metal and you can pick one up used for, oh, nuthin’)…GAS indeed…
I thought a cheap interface with free bundled software and some crappy headphones would be enough, too. Now I read nearly every page of the Sweetwater catalog over and over again until the next one comes out.
I wander around the dealer rooms at anime conventions and occasionally see someone wearing a shirt that says something abut the high cost of collecting anime. And I smile to myself, laughing at their naivete, because I race cars and they have, seriously, no concept of what expensive means.
My wife talks sometimes about collecting art, and I shudder, since I think that is up there in hobby cost with collecting cars, racing boats, and racing airplanes.
I saw the thread title, and came running, but Shamozzle nailed mine in the OP. And, doesn’t need to be a saltwater tank, either – even a freshwater aquarium is a pain in the neck. I’ve always said, if you have some family with kids that you hate, but need to give them some sort of present, give them an aquariums starter set. It will cost them money and aggravation beyond your wildest imagination.
I like to think I’m a fairly good cook, but I’m having a hard time even baking normal bread. It’s always too heavy with not enough crust. Oh, and scones, too. Scones are bastards. On the other hand, it’s a pretty cheap hobby - unlike music gear.
Yup. It was the first thing I thought of too. People get aquariums (or even a less posh sounding fishtank) because they’re supposed to be a low-maintenance pet. I wish! Even with fantastic pumps and weeds and this special liquid to make the water better, I ended up cleaning the bloody tank every week!
over into High Toy. Some, like a salt-water aquarium, must start out High Toy, but others, like me and guitars, don’t have to be High Toy - I just prefer it that way!!
