Do you have any expensive hobbies?
My new hobby is to order out and write prose in their “user experience” surveys.
From groceries to take out?
I find it fun, and sometimes I write a few paragraphs to an essay.
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Just living getting more and more expensive every damn day.
@SQUEEKY2 Me too. I spend hours online looking for groceries. Is a fun activity seeing that I have unlimited wifi.
I might if I had abundant disposable money, and the hobbies I have could get a lot more expensive. Though, I see that money is value and could make a difference in many ways, so even if I had a lot of disposable money, I might mostly use it on non-hobbies, charitable donations, helping friends and family, etc.
But, I don’t, so no.
But in theory, I could waste lots of money on:
* Getting more expensive computers and gaming equipment, and games.
* Buying expensive art supplies and fancy journals.
* Trying out lots of fancy restaurants.
* More exploring and travel (if that counts as a hobby).
* Indulging animals even more than I do (e.g. extreme catification)
* Pay someone to fix up an old car that has problems, rather than looking to sell it to someone.
* Photography equipment.
* More forest surveillance equipment.
Not really. I used to read comics weekly, but haven’t had the time in a number of years. Not really pricey though. It’s $60/year for the Marvel Unlimited app.
Astronomy. It’s really expensive.
Beading. Believe it or not, it gets expensive! I just spent over $90 online for the various beads for 2 necklaces I want to make. Of course, it only takes 20–100 beads to make the project out of the 500–700 that come in the container, so I have beads for another project.
Beaders are like any other craftsperson…we see something new and want to buy the kit or ‘ingredients’ immediately. We all have 20 or more projects to be started or already started and abandoned for a different project. Like squirrels, our heads are constantly turning and looking at the next shiny thing.
“Expensive”, like so many other things, is relative.
Collecting superhero statues, models and related stuff. Sure feels expensive to me but there are many similar collectors who spent 40
to 50K and mine was nowhere close, in these past two years.
@mazingerz88 That’s awesome. Can you post a picture of your collection? I, too, am a geek.
Most hobbies are expensive in both time and money. Right now it’s boating and it’s a small fortune. Last several years it was building tube amplifiers which is time consuming and expensive. Then there is fishing which is my least expensive hobby but you can make it be very expensive too. Mountain biking which has an expensive initial investment, but is relatively cheap when compared to others if you maintain your bike and don’t get a new one but once a decade or so. I collect retro games and game systems, that can be expensive but part of the hobby is finding this stuff cheap. I also collect vinyl LPs and some are expensive but again, part of that hobby is finding stuff cheap. I have been forbidden from collecting anymore cast iron but if the right piece crosses my path… We keep a small “fun money” budget for each other and I fund these hobbies with a meager budget of a couple hundred dollars a month. Except for boating, that shit is $$$
I used to have a huge storage box full of old comics, comic book cards, and the like. I started collecting when I was 12 years old.
Sadly. As with everything else I used to treasure, it was destroyed in a hurricane/flood…
I don’t think I had any crazy valuable stuff, but it was an entire category of my life lost…
I suffered through three storms, in two years. Lost every last thing, and other items that people donated to me…
The only things I have money in now, are my firearms. My favorite rifle was $2,500. Bullets are 50 rnds/$40, because the round was made just for that specific weapon. There are finally a handful of firearms that fore the same round. So. They at least aren’t hard to find…
@Caravanfan Sure but not sure where to post so you can access it?
@mazingerz88 You can post one picture at a time with your avatar in Fluther. You can post your picture and then revert back to normal.
I guess you could say smoking pot but I would bet I spend less per month than someone who frequents Starbucks for their burnt tasting coffee.
@MrGrimm888 After living in a building where I was displaced from a fire, and everything in my apartment had been soaked from the firehoses, I now keep my stuff in plastic containers, rather than cardboard. This way, if there’s ever a flood or other kind of water issue, the plastic will protect it better than cardboard will.
@smudges I wish we lived closer. I have at least two plastic containers of beading stuff, findings, charms, etc., brand new. I have this “collecting mentality” and I was buying stuff, especially if it was on sale, when I’d go to Michaels or other places where they’d have beading stuff and jewelry making stuff. I think my goal was to one day learn to do beading, and I never have. There used to be some more beading stores around, where they’d have free classes, but a lot of those places didn’t survive the pandemic.
A few
I own a few old cars
Guitar playing/guitar collecting
Winter Skiing
Boating
Fly Fishing
@smudges My daughter and I used to frequentbead shows whenever we could pre-pandemic, and lordy, the joys of Fire Mountain Gems in the meantime! I don’t bead anymore, but we are planning a trip to the Long Island Bead Festival in October. Wish you could with us!!
Painting with water color
@smudges I do beading, also. I can go to Michael’s and drop 30.00 on just a few strands of beads. I do go to craft shows and sell my stuff there, but the sales don’t really cover my costs. I do it mainly because it makes me happy.
@canidmajor I want to go!!! Take me, please!
I have a friend who sells beads online if anyone is interested.
Buying and playing board games. I’ve purchased over 100 for myself and others, and I own about 80. For a while, I was really into having a list and hunting around various sites and forums to find them on sale. I play some with frequency, but I’ll probably never play them all. Another challenge is having friends who are as enthusiastic as you are about managing medieval-era town in France while building it’s cathedral or spending 2 hours rehashing the events of the Cold War.
One of my more interesting acquisitions is Kolejka (aka “Queue”), a Polish shopping game set in the late Communist era where your family of meeples (pawns) stand in line outside a grocery store, drugstore, tv and appliance store, furniture store, and clothing store waiting for goods that may or may not be available that day. While you are waiting for the stores to open, you play cards that depict the various tactics people used in that era to jump ahead in line, such as borrowing someone’s child or reporting someone as a dissenter.
In the past couple of years, I’ve become acquainted with distant relatives who live in Poland, and one in particular loves this game because it evokes a real nostalgia. Many of the products you buy in the game, represented by cards, are the same ones that everyone owned in the Soviet era.
@jca2 If you’d like to learn a bit and try it out, get on youtube with a search for beginning beading. You’ll have to do some research for needles, thread, etc. You don’t use sewing items, but maybe you already know that. Hey, you’ve already got the supplies!
@canidmajor I’m familiar with Fire Mountain! Have loads of fun at the Long Island Bead Festival! I’m envious!
@chyna Good for you for selling! You’re right though, selling barely covers the cost of the beads. I have a couple of pieces that I made that Sherry Serafini taught in a class. She also has made or makes pieces for Steven Tyler and Melissa Etheridge among others. When I took her class I was a beginner and had no idea what a rock star she was in beading! Here’s a little sample: https://sherryserafiniart.com/the-gallery Mind blown yet?
@janbb Me! Me! I’m interested! Pm me if you don’t want to post it here. :)
@smudges I’ll get her business url and pm or post it.
I went through a phase of collecting translations of Chinese Tang poetry. I think I’ve got most of what is available and it never cost very much.
My latest kick since 2015 is outrigger canoe paddling and racing. It can be expensive as I’ve been buying more canoes. My wife and I own two 1 paddler rudder canoes, Two 1 person rudderless canoes, one 2 paddler rudder canoe, one 3 paddler rudderless canoes and one 2 paddler inflatable canoe. Been doing some international canoe racing also (England, Canada, Australia). Also 14 trips to Hawaii to race canoes.
My other hobby is videoing outrigger canoe paddling. I own 9 GoPro cameras (GoPro 1 through Max 360). I’m absolutely fascinated by the GoPro Max camper (own 4 of them) so much so that I hardly use the other older GoPro cameras anymore. Also owed 4 drones to capture aerial aspects of canoe racing. Most of the time the raw video that I collect is very boring. But can be intense when something goes wrong or in extreme conditions. Also I enjoy editing the videos.
The IRS classifies my teaching Zumba as a hobby. It costs me about $500 a year for the license.
My husband’s hobby is cars and race car driving. It’s a small fortune.
Although, maybe an intention in Lourdes?
Well, let’s see…
I’d say books, because I’m constantly buying books, but overall they’re not real expensive. And I’m not one of those people that wants to buy the first editions or signed editions or anything. But I should stop because I have too many books already that I haven’t read.
Cross stitch? I have enough things on hand to make that if I retired today and my eyesight was perfect, I still would never be able to get everything made before I died. However, I do tend to get my tendency out of buying new shiny things out, by buying patterns on Etsy that you can download. Most of those are only a few dollars so it’s not too bad.
Comic books? I used to have boxes and boxes and boxes, and then I don’t know why, but I ended up selling off the majority of them. Now I just have about three of the smaller boxes worth, and I hadn’t looked at them for years! I actually signed into my old account on this website where you can catalog all your books and it will keep track of the value, and even with the only 450 or so that I have now, it turns out that they’re worth about $1,800! I also went on this other website that I used to order from to buy some older editions that I never should have gotten rid of. But even ones that aren’t super valuable have really gone up in price. I think I’m going to try that Marvel unlimited app that @cookieman suggested. Because I know I’ll never be able to go back and read all those old series that I never even owned.
@smudges I have wires of various gauges and I have threads (elastic, etc.). OMG, you don’t even want to know. Combine the collector’s mentality with some spare money and voila, lots and lots of stuff.
@mazingerz88 IT’s okay. Just curious to see it. What I would do is upload it to somewhere and then post a link to it. But that’s a lot of trouble just to satisfy my geek curiosity
@mazingerz88 So you’re a Marvel person as opposed to a DC person?
I visit as many Jazz/ Ragtime concerts as I can afford.
@Caravanfan More Marvel but mixed. I grew up liking Batman, Superman, Ironman, Spidey and Iron Fist.
@mazingerz88: I have a bunch of the Bowen Design Marvel Mini Busts in my office. Bought them years ago.
@jca2 I could have been more specific at first. My comic stuff, and other things were in large plastic, stackable bins…
I did that after my first flood.
The biggest problem is mold. It seems to permeate anything and everything.
Down here, most people in my economic bracket have mold in their rental house/apt. You can run 2–3 dehumidifiers all day, and that still doesn’t work.
In my old house that got flooded so bad, we would have to empty the dehumidifiers twice a day.
For those who don’t know how dehumidifiers work, they suck the water from the air, usually it collects in a gallon or so container in the unit.
So. It is apparent that we sucked over six gallons/day of water/moisture from the inside air. It’s just THAT humid here in Charleston SC.
If floodwaters actually get into your place, even 4–7 inches is enough for the water to destroy everything. I had a few old/well built chests of drawers that had feet that kept the water from getting into the drawers. It doesn’t matter. The water travels up, through all wood, and even certain types of foundations. My first flood was like that. A week after the storm, ALL the drywall had been compromised. The water soaked up the wood in the house’s frame too. And things I had thought were safe in Rubbermaid containers, were found to be full of mold when all construction/repairs were done. I invested in different plastic boxes. Same problem.
The two other floods were closer to hip deep (and I’m tall.)
There’s just nothing that can be done.
A lot of houses in the area I prefer to inhabit were built in the 1940’s. You can surround those houses with sandbags and slap wet mud/clay over that, but the water comes up through the (I think it’s limestone) foundation.
Honestly. It wasn’t a problem as recent as nine years ago. Now. It’s common to see flooding on high tides, even if the weather is perfect. I hate to say it, but the whole city will likely be under a couple feet of water in 20 years (or sooner.)
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