I collect watches (not Hamilton, though)…mostly diving watches and chronographs. None of them are high end and priced accordingly, but in the aggregate…got some bucks ticking away.
Now THERE is an idea for what to do with that nice ball of yarn I didn’t resist at the Boxing Day sale.
A bag for my tarot cards!
I never did get into Magic, though my roomie was quite a fanatic. He’d pull out shoe boxes stacked with cards and several people could make decks to play with for the evening. I mostly stuck to LARP (which reminds me, I need to hit the second hand book store to see if I can find any other discontinued books that I don’t own and I want).
And I almost feel guilty for this, but you quilters. Have you see Heather Bailey’s patterns? Her material almost makes me wish I was a quilter/better sewer because she is just so awesome with what she makes and her designs.
I love photography/film making/musical instruments/building things/grifting. Grifting is, when used by my friends, a life style choice that involves taking what you need when the oppurtunity is present, be it an object or experience, from “giant faceless corporationgs” (that part is in jest). I say this broadly, because my friends do a lot more out and out stealing/theft than I do, where I mostly concentrate on pillaging things from trash cans. It really is an art.
Just tonight, I knew they were cleaning out the Architecture/Industirial Design building on campus. I got a few scraps of acetate, to build light diffusers. I also found four $150+ new Kodak darkroom lights, one with a filter in the trash along with 50 pages of fiber based 8x10 black and white photography paper ($40 msrp). There was also a really decent tripod that looked to be trash but couldn’t be certain, so I’ll give it a week. If it has moved/is gone than I won’t touch it.
In the past, I found in this one dumpster a $70 Manfrotto light stand, a $450 the name escapes me super professional flash strobe system (with the $90 dollar lightbulb in perfect condition), two pin spots and another, cheaper light stand. All needed to be rewired, but that wasn’t a problem with the handfuls of power cords I found in the dumpster behind one of the engineering buildings.
In the next few days, I am building a camera tripod track system (think Goudard’s wheel chair) and am finishing up my ukulele. I talked this elementrary school into letting me have their 100 watt amplifier/mobile lecturn that they weren’t using. So, I took apart an alarm clock, soldered some wires onto the piezo buzzer, and now am in the process of mounting a pickup on the body. Instant 100 watt electric uke!
My point being, a lot of the crap in the photography/film making business is 10 times what it would cost to make it yourself. You can’t make good lenses, but you can find some amazing solid metal 30 year old 35mm telephoto lenses for cheap and mount them onto your point and shoot Canon A640 with just a little bit of cunning. Now you have a 10mp camera with 28mm to 120mm zoom capabilities along with all the trappings of a typical Canon camera for under 400 dollars. Not a dslr, but will outcompete the Rebel xTi in most cases.
[QUOTE= Mine is also Magic.
Maybe we need to have a Magic Players vs. Knitters brawl? Or perhaps a Magic Players and Knitters social event of some sort? The knitters could knit little cozies in which the magic players could keep their deck boxes? The magic players could suggest color themes for knitting based on their favorite decks?[/QUOTE]
Oh, back in the heyday.
I’ll bet I could knit and play at the same time, though only if we were playing by old school rules, we stopped playing after they took away my interrupts. Good thing I didn’t have my needles that day.
Mine is cooking. I can’t resist nice cookware, or knives, or anything of the sort. I love my Calphalon, and now I’m eyeing Le Creuset and a set of All-Clad. I’ve had three sets of knives in the past year, and spent 18 months tracking down the exact knife block that I wanted. I have the Cuisinart, the Krups, the Kitchen-Aid, all the super-powers of the home kitchen.
Now I’m looking at a $9,000 stove that won’t even fit in my kitchen, so we’d have to do some $100,000 kitchen/home remodel to fit my new stove. Not gonna happen, but fun to dream about.
I will also spend ungodly amounts on weird ingredients, so I can attempt some new recipe. The funny thing is, my husband and my kids would be happy with meatloaf and mashed potatoes every night.
For those of you that posted knitting :rolleyes:
My wife sews. Last fall she spent somewhere north of $5,000 for a new sewing machine. :eek: The year before that it was a serger for only about $1500. My wife also competes in the “She who dies with the most Fabric wins” contest. I know we have fabric around here that dates back to the mid 1970s.
On the other side, I get to buy a new bicycle every time she gets a new machine. Last year I add another road bike, a Trek 2200. With the upgrades the first owner had a little over 2K in it. The bike had about 100 miles on it when he sold it to me for a grand. My other road bike is a Cannondale that was about $1400 retail when I bought it new. My full suspension mountain bike is about 2K retail, and my hardtail is the cheapie at about $1200 retail.
Sailboats…just a hole in the water you dump money into.
It’s not a hobby per se, more of an addiction. There’s this company in Texas that makes jerky (among MANY other great products). The stuff is to die for. Real artisan meats. Makes Jack Links taste like vienna sausages vs. prime rib.
Including shipping, $50 for 6-1/4 pound packs of different jerkeys. Mild Beef, Peppered Beef, Pork and Turkey (YUM!), Jalapeno Beef and Teriyaki Beef.
Military Surplus Firearms, primarily British/Commonwealth ones.
.303 and .455 ammunition are basically $1 a shot, and I don’t reload my empty brass, and by the time you add licencing/permit fees, range fees, and so on, it gets rather expensive quite quickly. Add to that all the research books and the guns themselves, and it gets rather expensive indeed. ;
I’m with the yarnaholics & needlecrafters. Although I’ve made it a point to never pay more than 80% of retail for yarn/needles/hooks/threads/kits, I’d estimate that I’ve got over $1,500 stashed away. I buy at online auctions, use coupons, & haunt rummage sales for the above-mentioned items. Also, I have trouble walking away from a good book sale with empty hands!
You all’s hobbies sound fascinating. I’d love to get into science-related hobbies (such as astronomy). I can’t do wine or other alcohol-based hobbies because of a family problem.
What a wonderfully eclectic group we have!
Juggling. The equipment is expensive (silicone juggling balls, for example, can cost $50 each) and then you have festivals all over the country which adds travel costs, lodging, etc.
I also ski, but since I’m pretty poor, it doesn’t cost me much money. It just means I only get to go skiing once every zillion years. I own my own skis, but I’ve had them for almost 20 years. I dream of the day when I can afford to ski the way I want to ski.
Hi Opal.
I’ve been juggling about a year. I started a thread about it some time ago, but it didn’t go anywhere (few SDMB jugglers, it seems). May I start another to ask you some questions?
Magic and comic books are my big addictions.
I used to spend more on Magic than I do now. About a year ago, I got into Magic Online where I can play against other people any time and thus no longer pay to enter weekly limited events (I suck at limited anyways.) I mostly play with fairly cheap cards, but I still drop $30 or so on them few weeks.
Right now, comics are my biggest financial black hole. I’m into both American comics (more DC than Marvel) and Manga and can easily drop $40 every time I walk into a bookstore. (I have to restrain my self and tell myself I’ll buy it later on line for cheaper to avoid overspending.
Magic and comic books are my big addictions.
I used to spend more on Magic than I do now. About a year ago, I got into Magic Online where I can play against other people any time and thus no longer pay to enter weekly limited events (I suck at limited anyways.) I mostly play with fairly cheap cards, but I still drop $30 or so on them few weeks.
Right now, comics are my biggest financial black hole. I’m into both American comics (more DC than Marvel) and Manga and can easily drop $40 every time I walk into a bookstore. (I have to restrain my self and tell myself I’ll buy it later on line for cheaper to avoid overspending.
.455 I can see, but .303? :eek:
I bought 2000 rounds of surplus .303 a few years ago for about $.09/round. Decent stuff too. What is it about Australia that makes it so expensive?
I’m afraid that after graduation merely living in New York City is going to be my “expensive hobby” :o
in that I won’t have money for much else… but it’s what I want.
Sure! I could talk about juggling all day 
I’ve talked about my hobby before. In the eight years I’ve been driving on track, I’ve spent over $46,000 for 100 track days. So for event registration, travel, equipment, maintenance, parts, and so forth, I pay an average of almost $500 a day for 12-18 track days a year. I’d be paying more if I weren’t instructing, and thereby getting a lot of my track time for free. I’d probably pay a lot more if I were actually racing.
BTW, that figure doesn’t include the cost of the three cars I’ve used on track, the Miata ($14,000), the Porsche 944 Turbo ($12,000), and the Nissan 350Z ($36,000). Or the insurance (about $600/year). So well over $110,000 for 100 track days and eight years of entertainment. Not quite as expensive as flying a helicopter, I guess. But a little pricier than knitting.
Photography (new hobby - Canon body, but now looking to upgrade the lenses). Also perhaps looking to buy a movie camera… and FinalCut Pro, which is the REAL reason for wanting the new camera. It’s fantastic.
Music:
Guitars - Martin and Tanglewood acoustics, Ibanez hollowbody, Strat electric. Need better amps and more effects. And I’d like a decent bass.
Keyboards - Korg Triton. Wish somebody would show me how to use it properly. Bought it for a band audition, then they decided they didn’t need a keyboard player.
Obviously, my REAL hobby is buying expensive stuff which I fairly quickly lose interest in. I should just go back to reading.
Used to be vintage reed instruments, until I got enough.
Now it’s hats, second hand clothing (a pick-up from years ago), and cynicism. Cynicism has cost me fortunes.