Evidently, my most expensive hobby is my husband.
He spends more than he makes, more than our mortgage, more than anything or anyone else.
I gave up my most expensive hobby, getting my nails done ($40 month) while my husband was spending $500 week at 7-11.
My husband and I are sailors - you know - the hole in the water into which you throw money… We need new(er) sails - if we’re lucky, we’ll find a couple of acceptable used ones for around $2K. If not, we’ll be buying new ones for around $5K. And I’m not even going to talk about all the electronics he bought and installed… But it keeps him out of bars, so there’s that. 
My personal expensive hobby is ceramics. I got a small bonus at work last year and put it towards a kiln and wheel. Then I needed a studio. And a work table. And storage shelves. And a cart. And, of course, clay and glaze and tools and accessories. But it keeps me out of bars, so there’s that! 
I spend money to shoot at my friends.
Paintball almost every weekend. Not only the paint every time but there is also the desire for a new gun, or barrels or trigger upgrade. Some of the stuff is cheaper for real guns.
I went to Maryland Sheep and Wool. My first spinning thought was that I needed another fiber hobby like I needed a hole in my head. Besides, it would cut into my knitting time. Then Mom got her wheel, but she doesn’t know anyone else who spins. She has no one to talk spinning and compare notes with. She held a gun to my head and made me take an Ashford Kiwi home. (parts of that may be slightly exaggerated) Now I can decide whether to spin or knit in my precious spare time.
The thing is, the closer to the sheep you get, the cheaper the final sweater.
For instance: Buy a handknit wool sweater: $300 (well, that’s what I would charge, theoretically)
Buy enough yarn/pattern/needles to make the sweater: $150
Buy roving to spin the yarn to knit the sweater: $40 (2lb merino top, available on e-bay)
Buy one entire raw 4lb fleece to clean, comb into roving, dye (optional), spin into yarn, and knit into a sweater: $24
Voila! Inexpensive hobby! (completely leaving out the $300 spinning wheel and $60 carding combs. . . )
Oh yeah. Necrons rule!
Went through the Magic phase about 4 years ago.
I collect psychedelic, jazz, folk, electronic, funk, soul, private press and weirdo records, in all formats (LP, 45 and 78, although only a few of the latter).
My tastes tend to be relatively oddball, and many of the records I’m on the hunt for were pressed 30-40 years ago, in quantities of 1,000 or less. I’ve never broken the $1,000 barrier (yet), but I have spent over $400 on one record, and I semi-regularly drop a c-note for a record I’ve been looking for for a long time. That said, it’s a trip to find a record you’ve been looking for forever for a dollar. Happens less often than it used to, sadly.
Fortunately, I have made a vow to myself to keep my collection at ~1,000 records. I’ve done this by unloading lots of records I know I’ll never listen to (“Styx??? what was I thinking?”) and by not buying every damn thing that comes my way. When I buy a record that is also available on CD, it’s because it’s either got the vibe/sound a CD doesn’t have (e.g. UK mono Beatles/Them/Small Faces, deep groove Blue Notes), or because it’s an amazing steal (West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band v3 for $10? hells yes!).
I do homebrewing and collect vintage synthesizers, both of which can get quite expensive, but I manage to keep things under control.
Nothing beats a drinking a cold homebrew with one hand and patching up a modular synth with the other!
Renaissance Faire is no particular bargain either. Merchant-class garb can hit a thousand dollars before you know what hit you - good “period” boots start at about $400 and go up from there. Heaven help those who wish to dress as a Noble. Those costumes can easily approach $2,000. (And that’s not counting the value of their time in making it!)
Weapons (just for display on yourself, since most Faires don’t want people pulling steel for any reason) is just nutty expensive. I know people who carry multiple $500 damascus swords, but they may as well stuff a wood yardstick into a hilt, since nobody will see the blade.
We don’t use it for anything else, but we have a 23-foot camper that wasn’t exactly cheap.
I’m on the board of directors for our guild, so there’s no shortage of travel to other Faires to show our faces. Seen the price of gas lately?
I’ve done a little cross-stitch. I have three or four large kits stashed away, so at the incredibly slow rate I go, and because I only pull it out a few times a year, I won’t be done for at least a decade.
I’ve recently started knitting, but my skill level (and knitting speed) is fairly low, so I haven’t sunk too much money into yarn and needles (yet). However, I have bought a very neat set of interchangable circular needles, and I do have a few skeins of yarn that I bought just because they were gorgeous (without a firm plan of what I would make out of them). And I’ve bookmarked and/or printed dozens and dozens of patterns off the internet and bought a couple knitting books, so I’m sure this hobby will be taking up a larger part of my budget in the future.
I’ve also recently pondered getting into jewellery making or digital photography. I started comparison shopping for digital SLRs, and the only cameras I wanted to get are out of my price range for now (at least until I have my student loans paid off next year), so I won’t need to worry about spending too much on that in the near future.
Yet another knitter here. Sometimes it’s amazing the amount of money that I will spend on yarn to make something I wouldn’t pay that much for if it were ready-made. I’m currently working on a blanket for my nephew-to-be - yarn cost, $150. If I had just bought the kid a gift, I seriously doubt I’d be spending $150.
Then again, it isn’t just the finished product you’re buying - it’s hours and hours of joy (and potentially a few hours of frustration.)
My most expensive project to date was this sweater (Donegal, from Alice Starmore’s Virtual Yarns )…but it took me six months. Even paying $170 for the kit and and $30 for the needles (I broke an Addi Natura US 3 circular halfway through the sweater) that’s 90 cents per day of entertainment…and I get a sweater at the end of it!
Shhhhh, don’t say St*rmore. She’ll sue you.
To the knitters: yarn.com just got in 15 new colors of Tofuttsies… they’re really pretty. I don’t have any of that brand yet, either… hmmm… :dubious:
And, Patternworks just announced its summer sale… and part of the sale is Koigu. For $6.99. Only like five colors, and dubious ones, but still. Koigu on sale? The Gods must be crazy.
Are you the devil?
Stop telling about great yarn buys! I’m going to great-yarn-buy myself into the poorhouse. (But what a stash I’ll have …)
She’s like the Voldemort of knitting. Starmore! Starmore! Starmore! Let her come for me…I am not afraid!
Mmm…Koigu…
Heh. Last pair of needles I bought were $24. The two pairs I bought before that were $17 each. The husband just bought an expensive pair of speakers for his computer music setup so knitting still counts as a cheap hobby even if you knit up a plus-sized dress of Tilli Tomas yarn on four sets of Lantern Moon dpns
Spinning is tempting. Better than his suggested expensive hobbies for me today: Gold Eating or Horse Mangling. Which as he pointed out are expensive, but spinning is much… more attractive.
That Tofuttsies goes quickly at the LYS. I didn’t even get a chance to see it in person!
Don’t tell me this though! You see, the store I prefer is having their Summer Solstice sale in 2 weeks, and if it’s even half like their Boxing Day sale (which they are saying it’ll be even better…)… well, I’m going to need all my stash money this month. 
And then of course the new stuff will come in shortly afterwards, because this sale is to make room for the new stuff.
7-11? What does he do, collect Slurpee cups? 
I’m a philatelist, and though I don’t purchase rare or unusual stamps, I do buy old stamps that I then use when creating one-of-a-kind, customized FDCs (first day of issue covers) on collectible postcards. Odds are, depending on what stamps the USPS is issuing any given year, I’ll spend about $1000 on stamps (old & new), postcards, mailing supplies, etc annually. Of course, as soon as I get the FDCs back, I could turn them around immediately and make 3x (or more) what I spent on them within a month or so.
But I haven’t sold any yet, and probably won’t for a while. I don’t really consider it a “nest egg” per se (I first & foremost enjoy the creativity involved in fashioning these individual pieces), but the thought does occur to me on occasion. I’ll be sending out my Star Wars batch in a week or so…
At least you’ll be warm!
Add me to the list of knitters who justifies the expense because it’s “practical” (I really need a deep-red lace shawl, really I do!). Fortunately, my SO is also a fiber freak and he doesn’t mind as long as I let him touch the yarn.
My really expensive hobby is the horse, though. Buying the beast was the cheapest part - do it once, and it’s over. Board and vet bills come, and come, and come… At least I can do my own hoof trimming. She keeps me sane, though, and is, overall, much less expensive than the equivalent amount of psychotherapy.
In the pantheon, I suspect it’s
I spent $16k on a car, then spent 7 years and another $20k into it to get it bullitproof. Now I don’t want to run it like it’s built to handle as I’m tired of having it broken. I then sold the paid-off reasonable car for a Subaru STi because I wanted a ‘fun’ daily driver and was only driving the hotrod two-three times a month, 8 months of the year.
Then I got into metalwork.
Lathe - $3k
Mill - $600
Tooling - don’t ask
I got a Mig welder last weekend for $80 at Harbor Freight! Such a STEAL!
Luckily, aluminum billet can be had for $1 a lb.
Video and photography don’t really count as I got into it with cheap equipment and inherited the good stuff when dad passed away ( Canon GL-1, Nikon D50 + nikkor lenses) They do things like: http://www.millertwinracing.com/TheFog
I don’t even wanna KNOW what my wife spends on Halloween crap.
I did the HPR thing till “Homeland Security” made it almost impossible to fly, a day of flying would eat $300 in reloads easy! I won’t even talk about kits, parts, electronics and ground support equipment.
I’m very interested in ham radio too, but not to the point of spending money just yet. 
