Asklemmy

Used to homebrew. At first I thought it'd be cheaper than buying my own beer but it quickly ratcheted-up with grain mills, larger and larger pots and burners, finding places to store the fermenting/aging beer, finding time to brew, finding time to bottle/keg, the clean-up and mess...and, in certain cases, you go through the whole process to find an entire batch has been ruined.

ITT: Everybody's current/longest hobby.

Mine is boardgames. You start free by playing somebody else's collection, then you get the urge to start your own...

Fishing. Who would have thought it was so easy to get addicted to buying various baits and lures.

keyboards, F-ing keyboards

Firearms.

It was fairly inexpensive before the pandemic. But since it's been a nightmare of price gouging.

It's also one of those hobbies where buying one thing leads down a rabbit hole of spending.

Hobby electronics started cheep, with a crappy soldering iron (a good precision one was the best purchase ever) and some cheep parts, ended up with a room stuffed with a thousand dollars worth or parts and a few thousand more in test equipment.

Fish tank.

Simple, I read. And with the internet I never have to worry about buying books.

RC stuff, but only kinda? My dad got me into micro helicopters about a decade ago. I now have several dozen planes, drones, helis, etc. Not to mention multiple RC radios, batteries, chargers, and FPV goggles. Absolutely love it, though. To be fair, it's been a few thousand dollars over a decade. It ads up sure... but quite a bit less than I spend on video games, and more satisfying. :)

Camping and camping gear. It can be so cheap and easy, but when you start buying high end gear it adds up quick.

Not to mention the different types of camping, backpacking, car camping, glamping, etc. Car camping “overlanding” gear is awesome, but so expensive.

Sim racing and Photography

Started with a $200 wheel and pedals setup, now my rig is worth we’ll over $2.5k and is basically top of the line. Upgraded parts one at a time over the last few years and it’s now as good as it gets.

Photography has me slowly upgrading lenses and eventually a new camera body. Just upgraded to a 200-500 F5.6 lens the other week for when I’m going to shoot the Daytona 24 this coming January.

Great post OP!

Film photography. Holy shit did that add up.

Thinkpads.

Hiking. You start out with what you got. Then on the first few hikes you find out what gear you absolute have to bring with you. Then when you have a fine little gear stash, you begin adding things from the never ending “nice to have” list. Then you go to outdoor stores just to have a look around… HA!

Electronics repair and projects

Beekeeping. It gets expensive very fast and doesn't seem to ease year on year

When I first got into my hobby (DJ) I thought I only needed to pay into the set up cost of buying equipment (turntables, mixer, sound), but I eventually learned that I had to keep buying records because I couldn't just mix the same two recorded forever, and that got expensive.

I bought a $20 Stanley sharptooth saw and a few second hand chisels.

See the banner on [email protected]

And I haven't even bought any stationary tools 😅

Bonsai

Disc golf.

Discs cost only $15-20 new, used ones can be only a few bucks, you only need one or a few to play, and most courses are free.

In reality, you keep buying new discs. And a bag to carry them. And more discs. And a bigger bag. Then a home basket. And a net to practice in. And more discs. Then a rack to hold the extra discs you can’t bag…. It adds up!

For me it was Badminton. You can start off with cheap $15 rackets and plastic shuttlecocks. Now my racket is $260 and I play with feather shuttlecocks which are about $2 a piece and only last a few rallies.