I started getting invested in a TCG (Digimon) for the first time ever a couple months ago (magic, YGO, pokemon etc. never did it for me before).
One of the selling points (at least currently) is that most decks are fairly affordable (less than 50 bucks affordable) and viable and even the very competitive decks shouldn’t set you back much (with less than 100 bucks you can easily make a top tier tournament-viable deck) .
Problem is I really started digging lots of different decks and discovering new favorite digimon and how they play and now I’m several hundreds of dollars of investment in both in cards and accessories (not even counting merch…).
I regret nothing though. It has helped me get out of the house (I work remote) and interact with people which has been very good for my mental health, and it gave me a way to revive some of my childhood nostalgia.
I’ve never been into TCG’s, but just wanted to say how back when the Pokemon and Digimon TV shows were first out, I was way more into Digimon. I do have some cards from back then but not sure if they’re even legit game cards. I only ever met two other people that watched Digimon (one was kind enough to lend me the first movie on VHS) but basically everyone has seen Pokemon in some form.
If your cards look like this then they are legit game cards but from the old Digimon TCG that was discontinued several years ago. The current TCG was released in 2020 along with the reboot of the Digimon Adventure anime.
I was also more of a Digimon kid than a Pokémon kid growing up, so it brings me much joy that the current TCG is actually picking up steam internationally. Hopefully the franchise keeps flourishing because it really deserves it.
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!
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.
One thing you can try out for storage is buying regular 2.5" solid state drives (the kind you install in a computer) and using a SATA to USB adapter to plug it in. It’s probably less durable than a proper external SSD, but gives you a path forward if you later want to install them into some kind of network storage server (or have a friend do it, if you’re not sure how).
I haven’t checked the prices very thoroughly, but you might be able to get the internal hard drives for cheaper as well. If you’re willing to go with magnetic drives (3.5" HDDs), you can get bulk storage for (relatively) dirt cheap, of course at the cost of having a noisy drive spinning up each time you open a file on it.
Book files are tiny though. Even very long books with a bunch of pictures are only usually a few megabytes in epub format. A $5 USB stick should fit thousands of books on it.
If you’re using PDF for books, then stop doing that :) PDFs have a bunch of limitations - the main ones being thay you can’t change the font size, and it can’t reflow the layout based on your screen size (i.e. format the book so a page exactly matches your screen size). They’re hard to read on mobile as a result.
I don’t have a ton of storage. My Raspberry pi400 which is my desktop has a 1TB and a 500GB SSD attached. I keep the Books folder synced with Google Drive along with my phone and Kindle Fire. My Book dir is: 58GB and has 18748 items (16970 files, 1777 folders). Gotta love zlib and Anna’s.
Vinyl records… 25 years ago you could hardly buy them . I listen to punk and they never gave up on the format and so it was cheap and collectible because print runs were small… from 2010 onwards, they came back in fashion and the major labels started clogging up the pressing plants and then pre-orders became a thing and the price started creeping up…now, in my country a vinyl that used to be $20 is now pushing $55 and mainstream artists are pushing $70 …my desire has really waned… I’m priced out of finding new artists because I can’t buy everything all the time like I used to.
I can appreciate the appeal of physical copies, but if it’s hindering your enjoyment then why not just listen to digital copies? The vinyl records are probably being scribed from a digital version, anyway.
Not OP, but I generally do listen to most of my music via streaming these days but it sucks: it’s not immersive, sound quality is garbage and I miss the ritual of examining the art and liner notes while listening. When you listen to an LP you’re more invested in it because you paid for it and also because you’re in proximity to the record being payed and you’re physically interacting with it. you end up listening to the songs in the context and sequence that they’re supposed to be listened to.
I know that a lot of this is intangible, but there is value in it
I have 1500 LPs from my collecting days but have bought only a handful of records in the last few years for this reason. Last time I mail ordered 2 LPs it came to $75.
You start off with just your computer and a free copy of Virtual DJ Home; next thing you know you’re spending $1300 on just a single turntable, and as we know you need at least two, plus a mixer, plus the $400 software needed to run it all.
Or you could go the vinyl route as a DJ and end up spending $70 on a single record as you’ve stated. Either way, you’re spending thousands.
Tabletop RPG. I started in High school, you need only paper a pen and a set of dice, right ? All the rules can be found online anyway, right ?
But it’s so much better to have the physical books. And you need more than one dice of each obviously. And this nice metal dice looks very good. I obviously need different set of dice with colors pattern that match my different characters.
Speaking of characters, I need mini. I could get the cheap basic one of course, but the lead ones looks sooo much better.
And I obviously need custom models for all my characters.
Several years later, with a disposable income and I added maps, tokens, terrains, cards, ect. Even a tablet that I use only for this. I’m now limited by the storage place available in my flat (maybe for my own good).
Traditional painting and illustration! While I now know that I never needed to spend more than $250 for professional-grade tools, I’ve spent about $18,000. As for sales in 3.5 years, they don’t account for more than $800. For that I mostly blame Instagram where it’s not possible to grow anymore organically and get an audience & potential customers. So I moved to the federated open source PixelFed now, if anyone’s interested in my book-style illustration: pixelfed.social/EugeniaLoli
Also, as a word of advice for anyone who wants to also do illustration and don’t want to do the same mistakes that I did. All you need is:
The Lukas 24 watercolor palette of student grade ($18). It’s good enough and these days most paintings are scanned, so even if not all colors are lightfast, it’s not a big deal. Few people only buy originals, most go for prints. If you’re going to go selling originals, consider the Daniel Smith primaries set of 6 colors for $40.
A set of brushes of different sizes, including a flat brush and round brushes including a long thin one to do details, $15
Pencil, eraser, sharpener, $15
A set of gouache. Best bang for the buck for professional quality is DaVinci brand ($10 per large tube), or if you want to go cheap, the Himi Miya set for $25. If you go for the cheaper stuff, it’s still advised to get a better quality white tube, so it’s truly opaque (the cheap stuff aren’t opaque enough). So go for Holbein or DaVinci white for $10-$15.
Soft core colored pencils, set of 48+. $15 (you will mostly need the muted colors to enhance the painting with harder edges)
Grey, sepia, black ink pens, and manga ink brush pens (for some types of paintings only), $40
100% cotton paper for watercolor $25, or any watercolor paper for gouache $10 (gouache works on any, watercolor is more nuanced).
Brush watercolor markers, e.g. Tombows or Ecoline – in case you want to do such type of illustration too, $30 for a few muted colors.
Masking fluid for watercolors, $10
White gel pen and white Posca pen (0.7mm) for white highlights, $15
Faber Castell white pencil soft pastel, $4
Caran d’ache Luminance white colored pencil, $4 (the cheaper colored pencils above again don’t include a strong white)
Caran d’ache Neocolor II white crayon, $4
A ruler, to help you sketch.
I included various mediums above in white color because highlights are king in illustration, and each provides a different look and feel, depending on the painting. Happy painting!
It’s a toss up between cooking and home networking for me.
Cooking because it started off as just finding neat recipes and giving them a shot to now experimenting with new techniques and harder to procure ingredients. My pantry looks like a mini spice market and keeping them fresh is its own hassle. Plus needing all the gear gets expensive!
I also got really into home networking during the start of the pandemic. I went from having a simple off the shelf mesh network to a full network rack in my basement serving some high end access points and cat6 drops in every room. Now I have a pretty secure iot stack that’s separate from my main vlan and one devoted to my work computer.
I have little labels on each jar of spices that I write the “bought” date on. In general ground spices I’ll give 9 months to a year, herbs I’ll typically give about a year, and whole spices I’ll give two years. As I’m using them, I’ll check the date on the jar to see if I need to add it to my shopping list. Every once in a blue moon when I remember, I’ll also just audit my spice rack.
It really doesn’t take long to grind a tsp of cumin, and the seeds stay fresh so much longer than the powder. And if the seeds start to lose their punch just toast 'em.
Get a bigger mortar then you think too. You’ll read about making pesto, or guac, or lots of Thai dishes, and wonder if it real does taste better. Sadly it does and you’ll regret your small mortar every time you make guacamole.
Yeah cooking is my biggest cost sink but things you consume I feel are more fun to be serious about.
Honestly the costs aren’t all that ridiculous. Bar something like a Dutch oven most good anodized steel woks only cost like $50 at a restaurant supply store. Cast iron pans and some stainless steel weren’t too bad either.
The problem is just that you have to buy a dozen different tools that each cost a little more than you think and the total cost is way higher than you think.
I will definitely agree that spices are the most shockingly expensive part as my little side cabinet of jars probably costs more than my entire record collection when you realize that I have 3 different types of cinnamon and Hungarian paprika, and smoked cumin, stacks of dried vanilla pods and more.
Was supposed to be the cheapest way to get exercise. You can do it right from your front door, no gym subscriptions, no specialized equipment (some people will tell you you don’t even need shoes), and it’s far and away the best time-value exercise I’ve ever found. You can get away with like 20 minutes 3-4 times a week and be doing great.
Well, turns out I love running and I love distance running so I’m now putting up enough miles to need new shoes 2-3 times a year, a nice Garmin smart watch and heart rate monitor to track my progress, sign-ups for several long-distance races each year, shorts, socks, you get the picture.
Could I do it cheaper? Yeah. But at the end of the day it’s a hobby and I like it
The races are so expensive! I can’t justify signing into one yet, I’m ready to run a half marathon but I’ll wait until I can run a nice full marathon since it’s almost the same price
They can be wildly expensive, and some truly aren’t worth it. I almost always opt to donate the shirt I get because frankly I’m a little picky about my gear and they’re rarely good quality, but even beyond that I’ve run a few where the race coordinators just haven’t got a clue how to host a race and I really start to question why I even paid to register at all.
Fortunately I’ve found an amazing local company that hosts trail runs and is managed by a former ultramarathoner and they’re the best races I’ve been a part of. I also feel good about paying a local small business.
You realize it’s an addiction when you intend to do 5k. Realize after that Strava didn’t work properly on your watch and then you end up doing a second 5k because the first 5k didn’t count.
I felt the same way about running until I started getting into triathlons. Watch out for that trap; races are at least $200 each, and road bikes ain’t cheap!
I already have a lovely gravel bike that I am comfortable making my Last Bike Ever ™. I mean the frame is great but I’ve been looking at upgrading the group set… It’s cheaper if I do the work myself!
I’m just getting into cycling and I’m super lucky to have gotten my dad’s old tri bike for free. He had it all kitted out and it’s pretty well perfect for me. It was in pristine shape until I wrecked it a couple times. One of them requiring 24 stitches.
So I guess that’s the most expensive hobby I’ve had - not in terms of financial cost, but definitely in terms of blood drawn!
Protip if you’re not used to race bikes: they can be a lot twitchier than you might be used to!
Oh yeah, forgot about that one. You thought you just needed one pair of shoes? Well, no I need a different pair for trail running and road running. And it gets cold here and I like to run in the winter so that’s a whole other set of clothing I gotta have. And let’s don’t even get started talking about how the grocery bill gets hiked up during the training cycle…
I was running for a couple of years , and my knee started to give me problems.
I went to an orthopedic Dr, and his advice was to take up swimming and if I wanted to keep running that I should hold on to his business card because someone needed to pay for his kids’ college.
I stopped running soon after and avoided surgery for a decade, but it still caught up with me. Knees are definitely cheap with for-profit healthcare.
This is why shoes these days are super engineered cushions essentially. Don’t skimp on shoes if you’re young and reading this, buy the good shit because it’s good (and usually it’s more expensive). $200 now saves thousands in replacements and tons of pain along the way.
This is not the first post where I feel it but I love it so much that we have a lot of people on Lemmy that can talk about things not related to computers!
Yes but that’s only good. I’m a computer guy too, but I couldn’t talk much about anything else, and I want to read about other topics too, besides this
Homebrewing. I have made many a beer over 8 or 9 years. They get better with each batch, but along with it is another new piece of equipment to make the process easier or more efficient.
You get some gear. It’s nice, but heavy…then you realize there’s so much lighter stuff out there.
$100/lbs later your congratulating yourself that your base weight is 15lbs until you add food and water, and you realize that your pack still is too heavy. You finally shave off another 2 lbs by buying all new luxury items at $30-$50 a pop, and getting a lighter stove.
Then winter comes, and that 4 season, dyneema tent looks mighty appealing. Not to mention you need a better rated sleeping bag (cause that hammock ain’t gonna cut it) and a pad, a better puffy and fleece, crampons, maybe an ice pick, and another stove that works in the cold…
Edit. Damn it, I forgot I need new shoes…even if I wanted to brave it using my summer pair, those trail running shoes are destroyed over the course of 1 season.
No joke I am totally comfortable with a 40L, 20-25lbs base weight, where I get to bring more shit like an ultralight pop out lantern, an extra foam pad to sit on, a flask, an extra tarp to string up for hang out space, camp flip flops, etc.
Each choice is purposefully selected for weight and such, but I include more of them.
Ugh same. I decided to upgrade my very uncomfortable sleeping pad recently which led me to the ultralight subreddit. I went from not having a clue how much my bag weighed to a 10lb base weight, tarp camping, a $400 quilt, 27oz backpack, making my own gear. I don’t even want to count how much I’ve spent in the last year.
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