Mine is turning out to be photography. I am the kind of person who wants the best or nothing. Since my hobby started I’ve bought five cameras (two of them dslrs) (not counting phones with cameras) and two lenses.
My most recent purchases are a canon eos 30d a few months ago, and a sigma 17-70 2.8-4.5 lens a few weeks ago (to replace the rubbish kit lens I got with my 350d, which you get with most canon dslrs)
I managed to sell my eos 350d to my brother (with kit lens)
I am now contemplating spending £750 on a telephoto zoom lens (sigma 50-500)
It’s a feckload of money to spend, but I can afford it and I don’t feel bad about it. If anything it makes me feel good to own such expensive equipment.
What’s your expensive hobby?
My expensive hobby is cooking. I like to buy beautiful cookware and make food that’s expensive (expensive ingredients & whatnot). I love gadgets and bakeware and utensils and etc!
My other hobby is birdwatching, which in itself is free, but a nice pair of binos and a top-o-the-line spotting scope can be an investment!
Record collecting has been an expensive hobby. I have over 17,000 now, 5400 of which are albums on vinyl / CD. I’ve been buying songs I like since I was a kid, and have had varying amounts of my collection stolen five times…thousands of them gone. I’m at a place in my life now where I can afford to replace them, but they cost a lot more now than they did the other times. Plus which, many of them have come out on CD since, and it’s nice to have ungodly rare material from source tape with no flaws. Today, the deluxe limited edition 2CD set of Paul McCartney’s new album arrived in the mail.
There’s been a succession of tape decks, blank tapes, amplifiers, speakers, CD players, turntables and cartridges and styli over the years. I just had the capacitors in the power supply replaced in my $2500 turntable, so I’ll never need another one. The Japanese ELP laser turntable is the state of the art, but I’ll never have ten grand to spend on one.
The software to record and restore old records is expensive, too. To save the results, I bought a 2x CD writer back when they were $400. Most recently, I got a 52x one for $15 after rebates, that also writes double-layer DVDs. I’ve bought a mountain of blank CDs.
Musical instruments will bankrupt you if you’re not careful. I’ve just got back into drumming. If I buy this kit, it’ll be at least a grand, and new cymbals can run several hundred each! I have a US-made Stratocaster, and a bass. I used to have a Les Paul Custom, but it was stolen, too. I haven’t even begun to buy the mixer and microphones to record the instruments, although I have one each of Shure SM57 and SM58 microphones now. I’ll have to get a bunch more gear to record the drums properly, and the piano, and the organ.
So there’s my expensive hobbies. They’re worth it to me.
Knitting. It doesn’t have to be, of course - I got most of my straight needles for free from a coworker, and you can always buy acrylic yarn. But wool and other more exotic fibers are spendy.
Right now I’m knitting a wool-and-mohair sweater (knitting two strands together). I need three skeins of wool at $11.75 each and four of mohair at $10.25. Then another pair of needles to get it gauge correctly, at $6.00.
It’s not on the order of buying skis or musical instruments, but once you buy those they tend to stay bought for a while. I buy this stuff for the purpose of using it all up so I can buy more and use it up.
It’s a good thing I knit slow.
(I’ll try to post pics or something when I’m done. It’s my first sweater and if it turns out it should be sweet!)
Which one?
Amateur Radio - Most people (including myself) don’t make thier own radios. Thousand dollar radios are not unheard of. My HF radio was $600 used. My HT was about $300
Computers - I haven’t bought one in a while, but if you are into having a semi-current gaming rig, $1500 every 3 years or so is not inheard of.
But the grand daddy of them all, which could easily be the most expensive hobby other than collecting countries - aviation. Now I belong to a club and have some of the lowest rates around. But if you have your own plane and it is less than 20 years old that a lot of money. Add hanger fees, insurance, annual maintenence ($1,000 in a good year, $15,000 if you need a new engine) not to mention 4/gallon av gas (with the plane burning 10 gallons an hour)
Now if you have a jet or a collectable plane thats when the really flows …
Brian
My husband seems to be collecting guitars. Yes, he does play. But still. Also, he has decided to embrace high end photography. This appears to be a bottomless money sink.
Which means I can go to silversmithing classes (silver’s not cheap!) and knit with expensive fibers and needles- top of the line- and still not touch his spending. I think that’s a good thing, although he claims that I’m free to take up a few expensive hobbies any time I want to.
I no longer do it as much as I used to, but I used to make jewelry. I preferred working with genuine, quality gemstones and 14k gold wire, chain, and findings. That got expensive real quick.
Flying and flying lessons - I am a perpetual student. It costs about $100 an hour to fly with an instructor. I also buy all the flying books, CD’s, and software that I can. Other people give me nice memorabilia (I just got a wooden propeller reproduction that is 6 feet long and beautiful from my mother). My costs are mere child’s play. Operating a more complex plane than a trainer or, God forbid, owning one can run into the hundreds of dollars an hour.
Rather. I’m in the process of making (what I hope will be) an utterly gorgeous silk shawl for myself. It’s going to cost more in materials than I would ever spend on a single item of clothing under normal circumstances. But I totally adore the yarn. It’s hand-dyed silk – how could I not adore it?
I’ve also gotten into Addi Turbo needles recently, which cost quite a bit more than other kinds. They’re fabulous, though.
I feel guilty about the money I spend on sometimes, but I do try not to go too crazy. And I justify a fair amount of stuff using it’ll-make-a-wonderful-gift defense.
