In 1981, I won a goldfish at the fair. My parents were annoyed about having to buy a bowl for it. It died within days (no living creature should be kept in a half gallon bowl), but I pestered my mom into buying a ten gallon tank for the replacement. This was the beginning of a lifelong hobby- I now have nine aquariums in my living room, and in the past forty-some years have spent many thousands on tanks, fish, plants, fish food, and so on. My most expensive tank cost me €5000 to set up.
And all this began because I spent a quarter and managed to get a ping-pong ball into a cup.
You win!
As soon as I saw “goldfish” I knew
It started with headphones to listen to music on the go. Then it become a DAC for the headphones. Then it became an inherited record collection. Then it became a turntable. Then it became a pre-amp. Then it became a massive and varied record collection.
All and all I’ve probably spent, I don’t know, upwards of maybe five to ten thousand dollars overall with all my audio equipment and record collection.
For me it is maybe camping.
I just tested my new sleeping bag - under 0.5kg rated to -5°C. And realised that I bought/ replaced lots of gear to higher quality gear over few years.
Sorta the same here. Car camping equipment, wilderness camping stuff and mountain hiking gear over 10 years for a family of four. Estimation is $15,000 - $20,000 easy.
We tell all parents that some gear is worth to invest in.
Still on the summer camp some children’s have too light sleeping bags (we have to borrow them some old army bags), bags worth only for recycling bin…
I got into tabletop gaming in the late highschool/early college years, y’know, as you do, and I thought, “oh, this is neat, I can have fun with friends and draw my own maps on this dry erase mat, print out a couple paper character sheets and one set of dice, and maybe a couple books as I can afford them so I’m not snagging the DM’s copy, not even a hundred dollars a year.”
And then Dwarven Forge ran a Kickstarter for Game Tiles.
Scuba diving. SO and me signed up for a course some two years ago out of curiosity. Now I’ve got about €7-8k worth of equipment lying around which, besides our 2-3 diving tours a year, I mostly use in our small swimming pool. I still enjoy the peace & quiet down there a lot though.
Catfishin’.
Holy hell… And so many get turned back, too. I keep some eater-sized channel cats (roughly 4-13 pounds for females and the males stop being really good eaters at less than that.) And all the flatheads get released nowadays, at least until they make a good comeback in my area.
But, it ain’t all about the meat. It’s mostly about the getaway time. And the fuckin addiction to catching them. Time spent catching bait and long nights with no bites are okay, too. A bad day fishing is better than a good day working.
All my trout gear was useless against the bastards, so it was a total rebuild of gear over the years. And them big-assed hooks ain’t cheap. It’s easy to go overboard especially with the store-bought baits, and then figure out that fishing was better when you were fishing with the stuff you caught around the river anyways…
Kinda the other way around; but when I was 27 I got divorced and decided to go to uni to study radio production with a view to changing my career.
Three years later, I’d graduated with a 2:1 and almost £20k of student debt.
…and all I have to show for it is a podcast that I used to do, because I couldn’t find a job in radio.
Singing can be surprisingly expensive. My fees for 1 year with two choirs is almost £350, plus extra for hiring/buying sheet music, transport to and from rehearsals and tours. Plus the dinner I have in town before rehearsal (it’s only itsu but it mounts up). Oh and a concert dress (hopefully I only need the one this year), that was £80.
It’s worth it though!
dog sports and crochet/knitting. i spend about $200/month on agility lessons, plus entry fees. good yarn is not cheap.
Basically any hobby has a habit of absorbing all your spare income, doesn’t it?