Expensive Hobbies

[StevieP]

After the events of the last year or so the one thing that has been equal parts comfort but also frustrating are my hobbies. I have one (creative writing) that is quite cheap and doesn't ask for much of me other than my imagination, a decent pen and a notepad, but I do have other hobbies that quite honestly can be more of a financial drain. After some major personal changes over the last 16 months where at some point I really should have sat down and made a budget for myself, it is now quite clear to me that my spending habits haven't changed in the slightest and boy do I have some expensive hobbies (pornography aside).

So my major two I would say are video games and Lego. I not only buy new video games on a reasonably regular basis but I also enjoy hunting down and obtaining games for older systems and platforms that I either used to own and child me had to sell in the past when I upgraded or that I had always wanted and never got a chance to. Or just being silly with it - my last trip to a retro games store in October of last year I bought every ridiculous movie tie in I could find. As they were bad games they were only £1 or £2 each in the main (but I bought a lot of them) but curiosity on what the hell a Reservoir Dogs video game would play like got the better of me...

With Lego - I really find it relaxing to build, like making a puzzle, over the course of a couple of evenings or so... I recently built the two sets based on the TV show Friends and have this month got the new Seinfeld set... more of a recent thing I've started after I received the Disney castle a few years ago at Christmas (and took me a week to build) but again these sets can be VERY expensive. Could never justify spending £650 on the Lego set of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars (but you know I would love to) but some of these run into the hundreds of pounds as it is anyway!

So here's me trying to start a new thread and not really sure how I am doing with it - but I just wondered if any of you had hobbies of your own you end up finding yourself spending quite a lot of money on? Again, excluding porn because I think at this point that is all a given here!

Have a great day everyone!

[lance_s]

Divorce is an expensive hobby.

Photography used to be a hobby of mine. Real photography, with film and photo paper and chemicals. But between raising a family and financing a divorce I never had much chance to indulge. The house I live in now actually had a full darkroom when I bought it (the previous owner happened to be a photographer). But I never had the money to properly use it and when I had the basement redone, I sold off everything.

Now I could probably indulge again, but the world has gone digital. There is still a small market for black and white film photography, but at this stage in my life I'm not sure its worth the effort and investment, especially as the price may become prohibitive when I retire in a few years. I'm thinking of taking up sketching as an inexpensive hobby.

I used to enjoy playing with Lego blocks as a kid. What I liked back them was that the blocks were generic and you had to use your imagination to make things. Now they are pretty much all sold as kits to make something specific and there is much less room for innovation. I've seem some lego exhibits at shows and they can be truly awesome.

And then there are miniature trains....

[WalterB]

It's a great thread, Stevie. I have a couple hobby things going on here. Being a retired Radio Electronics tech, I have a smaller electronic Oscilloscope I am putting together. An O'scope is a piece of test equipment which converts an electronic signal to a visual picture so you can see what that signal is doing. A good one can cost $2,000 and more. But mine is just a small kit, just under $100, if I remember.

My other hobby is building models. Aircraft and cars are my favorites. Right now I am working on Balsawood models. I have completed one and am early in the second. The pieces are laser cut into thin sheets of balsa wood or plywood. Each piece is numbered and the instructions include great pictures. In fact, the Hot Rod I am currently building only has pictures/drawings. But they are well done and easy to follow. The biggest problem is, they are wood, so the pieces have to fit pretty tightly to stay together. You have to be careful, as you can rather easily break off small tabs. So far I've been lucky, lol.

My first was called a Marble Parkour. It's kind of an amusement park for marbles, lol. The marbles are delivered to a "Ferris wheel." You turn a crank, it delivers the marbles one at a time to a higher level. From there they roll to a step type mechanism that lifts them to the top. From there, they are delivered to two 'raceways' via a swinging basket. They then travel down one of two routes and end up back at the Ferris wheel. Check out the video here.
https://www.rokronline.com/products/mar ... kour-lg501

The one I'm on now is a rubber band powered Hot Rod car. It is tougher to assemble. Some pieces are a bit hard to get together. But slow and easy is the rule. They also give you a small piece if paraffin for you to grease the moving parts. That also comes in handy for assembly, too. Here is the Amazon page.
https://www.amazon.com/Wood-Trick-Woode ... ast_sto_dp

Oh, yeah. Once I got the Marble kit, I read on the box "Suitable for ages 14+." Well, that made me feel great. "Gee, I can do things a 14-year-old can do." But the kits ARE kind of fun. I think I usually spend about 2 hours at a time working on them.

[StevieP]

Divorce is an expensive hobby.

Photography used to be a hobby of mine. Real photography, with film and photo paper and chemicals. But between raising a family and financing a divorce I never had much chance to indulge. The house I live in now actually had a full darkroom when I bought it (the previous owner happened to be a photographer). But I never had the money to properly use it and when I had the basement redone, I sold off everything.

Now I could probably indulge again, but the world has gone digital. There is still a small market for black and white film photography, but at this stage in my life I'm not sure its worth the effort and investment, especially as the price may become prohibitive when I retire in a few years. I'm thinking of taking up sketching as an inexpensive hobby.

I used to enjoy playing with Lego blocks as a kid. What I liked back them was that the blocks were generic and you had to use your imagination to make things. Now they are pretty much all sold as kits to make something specific and there is much less room for innovation. I've seem some lego exhibits at shows and they can be truly awesome.

And then there are miniature trains....

I wouldn't want you to have to divorce often enough to consider it a hobby!

Photography is something perhaps I need to learn a bit more about as I now have two fairly high spec Canon digital SLRs to my name... my dad was keen on his photography, but never had a dark room - instead getting anything developed in town, at the sort of photography shop that really doesn't exist anymore. He fully went in with the digital though, got a fancy printer and the right stock paper to print out his own photos... and bought Adobe PhotoShop every year too! I could never get my head around it myself but always admired it. He also was into model railways too actually... his set remains intact in the loft currently but I've no idea what to do with it. The thing cost a fortune.

I did use my imagination a lot with Lego as a child, making up my own things - but now I just like building the sets as a way to unwind in an evening and pop them in the display cabinet on show when I am done.

Sketching would be a good hobby to take up, and inexpensive (in theory) for sure... get your supplies from an office store as opposed to an arts and crafts shop and you may do better! Would that be landscapes, or objects, or people?

[StevieP]

It's a great thread, Stevie. I have a couple hobby things going on here. Being a retired Radio Electronics tech, I have a smaller electronic Oscilloscope I am putting together. An O'scope is a piece of test equipment which converts an electronic signal to a visual picture so you can see what that signal is doing. A good one can cost $2,000 and more. But mine is just a small kit, just under $100, if I remember.

Thank you Walt - it's just been something that was on my mind lately and wanted to perhaps vocalise a couple of things and felt this would be a pretty non-judgemental place to share!

First of al the Marble Parkour looks incredible! All the cogs and moving parts are giving me a few steampunk vibes... when I first read you were building models my brain went to like the Airfix kits and things of that nature and I was going to ask if you painted them when you were done, but these wooden models look perfect as is without the need to paint them afterwards! As for the suitable age recommendations on the box - I really pay no heed to things like that. Some of the Lego kits I get (well the Seinfeld one is actually 18+ but then who under 18 would want a Seinfeld set? lol) are recommended for young ages, as are the games I play. If it brings you joy, then it's perfectly fine!

The Oscilloscope sounds brilliant too... always wished I were more confident with electronics! And I wouldn't mind seeing it once you've finished putting it together, if that's okay?

I do post photos of my Lego sets on twitter and instagram - as I'm doing them usually as a little progress thing to log what I am doing.

[lance_s]

Divorce is an expensive hobby.

Photography used to be a hobby of mine. Real photography, with film and photo paper and chemicals. But between raising a family and financing a divorce I never had much chance to indulge. The house I live in now actually had a full darkroom when I bought it (the previous owner happened to be a photographer). But I never had the money to properly use it and when I had the basement redone, I sold off everything.

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I wouldn't want you to have to divorce often enough to consider it a hobby!

Photography is something perhaps I need to learn a bit more about as I now have two fairly high spec Canon digital SLRs to my name... my dad was keen on his photography, but never had a dark room - instead getting anything developed in town, at the sort of photography shop that really doesn't exist anymore. He fully went in with the digital though, got a fancy printer and the right stock paper to print out his own photos... and bought Adobe PhotoShop every year too! I could never get my head around it myself but always admired it. He also was into model railways too actually... his set remains intact in the loft currently but I've no idea what to do with it. The thing cost a fortune.

I did use my imagination a lot with Lego as a child, making up my own things - but now I just like building the sets as a way to unwind in an evening and pop them in the display cabinet on show when I am done.

Sketching would be a good hobby to take up, and inexpensive (in theory) for sure... get your supplies from an office store as opposed to an arts and crafts shop and you may do better! Would that be landscapes, or objects, or people?

Divorce the first time was very expensive. Second time was a breeze, we wrote up things on a scrap of paper, gave it to a lawyer and got it all taken care of for about $ 2000.

Part of the reason I liked photography was working in the darkroom. Working with photoshop would just not be the same. I don't want to lug around an SLR any more; I keep searching the internet for "credit card" cameras. There used to be some, but none available right now. I may get a decent point and shoot and see what I can do with it.

If you have an old working train set, it is probably worth a small fortune. I got a basic Hornby Dublo set for my third birthday, and when I was about 10 got additional track to upgrade to a figure 8 layout but that is as far as it went. My dad made a tunnel out of the plaster of paris bandages they used in those days for immobilizing fractures.

Sketching all I've got so far is a couple of do it yourself books. I would probably stick to landscapes or objects; I don't think I could do people - I'm too literal.

[WalterB]

I will try to remember O'scope pictures, Stevie. But right now, completion is still a while away. I'm still at the point of assembling the circuit boards, and that takes a while, too. We'll see. I want to go ahead and finish this car before I get back to the scope.

[StevieP]

Divorce the first time was very expensive. Second time was a breeze, we wrote up things on a scrap of paper, gave it to a lawyer and got it all taken care of for about $ 2000.

Part of the reason I liked photography was working in the darkroom. Working with photoshop would just not be the same. I don't want to lug around an SLR any more; I keep searching the internet for "credit card" cameras. There used to be some, but none available right now. I may get a decent point and shoot and see what I can do with it.

If you have an old working train set, it is probably worth a small fortune. I got a basic Hornby Dublo set for my third birthday, and when I was about 10 got additional track to upgrade to a figure 8 layout but that is as far as it went. My dad made a tunnel out of the plaster of paris bandages they used in those days for immobilizing fractures.

Sketching all I've got so far is a couple of do it yourself books. I would probably stick to landscapes or objects; I don't think I could do people - I'm too literal.

I was never into photoshop either - dad would spend ages "improving" his photos... the old saying the camera doesn't lie hasn't been the case for some time now. I prefer the point and shoot method myself. I do have a small digital camera I take with me on holidays, as well as the camera on my phone. I guess I just want to make something of the SLRs because I have them now.

Same with the model railway... it's quite large, with a lot of scenery and everything. At the moment it's just got a dust sheet over it to keep it clean up in the loft, and there's a part of me that really doesn't want to get rid of it - even though it's worth a pretty penny for sure.

The sketching approach sounds good. People are quite hard to do actually... I remember that just from doing art back for sixth form college. I could never do hands! The creative writing suits me fine. Just me, a pen and a notebook. I've only made one short story public, a few years ago on a website competition (where it's still available for anyone to read) but for the most part I keep them to myself... just a creative outlet.

Going back to the expensive hobbies... I am trying to keep myself off eBay this evening because I am looking up video games again!

[StevieP]

I will try to remember O'scope pictures, Stevie. But right now, completion is still a while away. I'm still at the point of assembling the circuit boards, and that takes a while, too. We'll see. I want to go ahead and finish this car before I get back to the scope.

Thanks Walt, I'd really like to see it - but I am sure it does take a long while! All my best putting that car together! Probably like me with the Lego sets, do you ever get close to finishing the model and wish you just had a bit more to do? :)

[WalterB]

No, When I get near the end, I tend to get a little anxious and have a tendency to go faster. These days, I am able to slow it down. I mean, what have I got besides time? lol. Once it's done, it's done. lol. I then move on to the next project.

[CGYMike]

This is a terrific thread..way to go Stevie!!

I've been a photographer and loved it (expensive)...later on took on cycling and then later on running (fairly cheap until you start going to out of country marathons...that can get a little pricey). Then later in life I turned to woodworking...thought it was going to be fairly reasonably priced, but if I add up the cost of my tools and all of the wood that I erect (see what I did there?) it has probably cost me a pretty penny.
The thing is though, the time I spend creating stuff is extremely satisfying.
Everyone this Christmas is getting coasters!!!!
Oh, and I love Lego and have a few sets around the house, but damn that shit is expensive !!

[StevieP]

This is a terrific thread..way to go Stevie!!

I've been a photographer and loved it (expensive)...later on took on cycling and then later on running (fairly cheap until you start going to out of country marathons...that can get a little pricey). Then later in life I turned to woodworking...thought it was going to be fairly reasonably priced, but if I add up the cost of my tools and all of the wood that I erect (see what I did there?) it has probably cost me a pretty penny.
The thing is though, the time I spend creating stuff is extremely satisfying.
Everyone this Christmas is getting coasters!!!!
Oh, and I love Lego and have a few sets around the house, but damn that shit is expensive !!

Thank you!

I would say set up a little Etsy store to sell your crafts to try and recoup some of the money back, but then I'd worry it would become more of a side business and chore than a hobby! Make my coaster Mickey Mouse shaped and you have a deal!

And yes, Lego is getting so expensive these days... the Friends set I bought was £135 (which is actually towards the lower end pricing scale) and took me 3 evenings to do!

[lance_s]

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My other hobby is building models. Aircraft and cars are my favorites. Right now I am working on Balsawood models. I have completed one and am early in the second. The pieces are laser cut into thin sheets of balsa wood or plywood. Each piece is numbered and the instructions include great pictures. In fact, the Hot Rod I am currently building only has pictures/drawings. But they are well done and easy to follow. The biggest problem is, they are wood, so the pieces have to fit pretty tightly to stay together. You have to be careful, as you can rather easily break off small tabs. So far I've been lucky, lol.

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I used to do the Revell and Airfix plastic model kits. I was never very good and always had difficulty finishing near the end when all the intricate work had to be done. I think I rushed too much, And forget it it I ever tried painting the models - total mess.

I do remember making a model of an F-104 Starfighter - it was a beautiful looking plane - even if it did earn the sobriquet of widowmaker. For killing its pilots - not the enemy!! And the SS United States. I read recently that the ship is now a rusting hulk moored somewhere on the Delaware River.

[Davest]

After porn, which is by far my most expensive hobby, I also play PC video games and tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) like Dungeons and Dragons. My board game habit used to be pretty expensive, but I have so many I haven't played yet that I have pretty much stopped buying them. RPGs should be pretty cheap because you can play for hundreds of hours after buying just one book. Where they get expensive for me is when I go on trips to spend long weekends playing games with friends. I will only spend $100 or so on the long weekend coming up locally where 30 of us will be staying in a State Park near the airport. The trip I'm going to cancel tomorrow for September for a house con in Minnesota would have cost me $600 or so. The house con in November (about 20 us will rent a huge 5-6 bedroom house in the mountains north of Atlanta for four days) will probably be another $300. So I guess my expensive hobby is spending time with my friends.

[ErikB]

I used to do the Revell and Airfix plastic model kits. I was never very good and always had difficulty finishing near the end when all the intricate work had to be done. I think I rushed too much, And forget it it I ever tried painting the models - total mess.

I do remember making a model of an F-104 Starfighter - it was a beautiful looking plane - even if it did earn the sobriquet of widowmaker. For killing its pilots - not the enemy!! And the SS United States. I read recently that the ship is now a rusting hulk moored somewhere on the Delaware River.

I had a similar lack of patience with models as a kid, especially with the painting, but my models were either Star Trek (The Original Series, since
none of the others existed yet) or Space 1999 (pretty much just the Eagle 1 Transport).

My most successful model (because it did not require painting), which I paid for in multiple installments, was an anatomically-correct
glow-in-the-dark human skull. One of the teeth came out of its socket and split in half so that you could see what the anatomy of a tooth
looked like. After putting it together, I put it on the desk in my room. I put a solid blue marble in each eye socket (the marbles were borrowed from a
Chinese Checkers set) and used it to hold my glasses. Or at least, I took a picture of it in that condition, which hopefully is still either in with my
stuff somewhere or in the family photo album. I have no idea where the skull is now.

Have you seen any of the Calvin and Hobbes strips regarding assembling model jets?

[ErikB]

For adult hobbies, there was a time when I was taking courses in various arts in the somewhat-local area.

I took a couple of glassblowing (hot glass) classes from a local glassblowing shop before they moved out
of the area. It was lots of fun, but I don't have the skills.

At the local art museum I have taken drawing, chalk, pottery, and stone-carving classes. Drawing was
useful, but wasn't my best medium. Chalks were my medium (as stated by my instructor, who had me
in both her drawing class and her chalk class). I haven't kept up with them, though. Pottery was the
class I took the most times. I never gained any skill with the wheel. I enjoyed building things by hand,
though. Stone carving was my least successful class. I made a rock with scratches on it that you could
use to hold open a door. I donated it to the museum so that another, more deserving student could
give it a shot.

My most adventuresome pursuit was warm glass. It was adventuresome because I had to drive a
good distance into Massachusetts to where the classes were being offered. I fell in love with
it, though, and if/when I get settled in New Hampshire, that would be the first hobby I would
consider re-starting. Its plenty expensive, though. Warm glass encompasses a variety of techniques
where the glass is usually worked with cold (cutting, airbrushing, sandblasting, gluing, etc) and then
the kiln is used to fuse the glass or set whatever you have sprayed or drawn on it. Bead-making is
more like mini-hot-glass, and I showed only slightly more skill than I did in the glassblowing
classes just because the blobs of glass were smaller.

[StevieP]

After porn, which is by far my most expensive hobby, I also play PC video games and tabletop role-playing games (RPGs) like Dungeons and Dragons. My board game habit used to be pretty expensive, but I have so many I haven't played yet that I have pretty much stopped buying them. RPGs should be pretty cheap because you can play for hundreds of hours after buying just one book. Where they get expensive for me is when I go on trips to spend long weekends playing games with friends. I will only spend $100 or so on the long weekend coming up locally where 30 of us will be staying in a State Park near the airport. The trip I'm going to cancel tomorrow for September for a house con in Minnesota would have cost me $600 or so. The house con in November (about 20 us will rent a huge 5-6 bedroom house in the mountains north of Atlanta for four days) will probably be another $300. So I guess my expensive hobby is spending time with my friends.

That sounds great! Especially how your most expensive hobby is spending time with your friends... that's a fantastic viewpoint! D&D was always something I wanted to get into, especially after the recent boom with it seemingly being played by everyone on YouTube and enjoying watching the Oxventures guild with their campaigns. I feel I may have missed the group of people I knew who I could have engaged in that with. I do enjoy playing those Fighting Fantasy adventure books which are a little like D&D-lite for a solo player. Board game wise, yes they do get expensive. I'm play Disney's Villainous a lot with my brother and between us we've got all the expansions. That got costly.

[StevieP]

For adult hobbies, there was a time when I was taking courses in various arts in the somewhat-local area.

I took a couple of glassblowing (hot glass) classes from a local glassblowing shop before they moved out
of the area. It was lots of fun, but I don't have the skills.

At the local art museum I have taken drawing, chalk, pottery, and stone-carving classes. Drawing was
useful, but wasn't my best medium. Chalks were my medium (as stated by my instructor, who had me
in both her drawing class and her chalk class). I haven't kept up with them, though. Pottery was the
class I took the most times. I never gained any skill with the wheel. I enjoyed building things by hand,
though. Stone carving was my least successful class. I made a rock with scratches on it that you could
use to hold open a door. I donated it to the museum so that another, more deserving student could
give it a shot.

My most adventuresome pursuit was warm glass. It was adventuresome because I had to drive a
good distance into Massachusetts to where the classes were being offered. I fell in love with
it, though, and if/when I get settled in New Hampshire, that would be the first hobby I would
consider re-starting. Its plenty expensive, though. Warm glass encompasses a variety of techniques
where the glass is usually worked with cold (cutting, airbrushing, sandblasting, gluing, etc) and then
the kiln is used to fuse the glass or set whatever you have sprayed or drawn on it. Bead-making is
more like mini-hot-glass, and I showed only slightly more skill than I did in the glassblowing
classes just because the blobs of glass were smaller.

That all sounds so cool ErikB - even though you say you didn't have the skills with the glassblowing or the pottery, at least you gave it a shot and took the classes! Did you get to keep anything that you created?

[Davest]

Board game wise, yes they do get expensive. I'm play Disney's Villainous a lot with my brother and between us we've got all the expansions. That got costly.

Yes, like I said, I might have a board game problem.

[WalterB]

I've got an old Nintendo 64 with a controller and about 5 games. You guys know anyone who might be interested?