A 7€ MTG Starter Set.
And now I’m stuck.
I remember when the game started in the '90s, booster packs were like a buck. I can’t afford to stay in standard and most popular formats I enjoy won’t let me use cards I like.
Turns out PC’s are a cheap hobby.
Many hobbies are cheap if you choose wisely out of your possible interests; and then go with cheap, good enough options rather than getting swept up in online echo chambers (where nothing less than top tier is acceptable).
Yeah but they don’t pull the dopamine like the expensive ones do
Motorcycles: Excuse me
Sports cars: Hold my beer
Planes:
lmao, what? Ground floor for building a usable gaming PC is $1,000. A lot more if you want to play new games with decent graphics.
And those games cost money too.
Realistically you’re spending $5,000 on a nice PC, monitors, speakers, accessories, and a collection of games. You’re going to need upgrades and additional games over time so even more money.
Compared to other “adult hobbies” such as cars even the highest end PC costs peanuts.
That’s only if you are in the subset of PC enjoyers who like state of the art equipment, expensive accessories and expensive recent games.
I consider myself a PC nerd but 5K is more than I spent in the last 10 years on the hobby. I’ve built my main rig for <1K, own a few raspberries and my home server is an old work laptop. It absolutely doesn’t have to be an expensive hobby.
A relatively cheap PC with Factorio and you are set. You won’t spend much on food either, so win-win.
5k? I don’t believe it. When in get home I’ll total up my setup and compare notes
EDIT- So I bought some stuff at different prices than you’d get today (cough GPU) so I will list a few prices for.
PC Hardware
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Intel i5 10400 - $180
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RAM 16GB DDR4 - $40
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Mobo - $180
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NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (Used on ebay) - $215, New is about $450
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AverMedia HD2 Capture Card - $150 (now $99)
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PCIE Wifi Adapter (Amazon) - $20
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250Gb SSD (system and files, gift) - $80
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2Tb HDD (Games, tried to save on budget) - $80
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PSU - $120
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Total Spent - $985
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Total Value - $1300
Peripherals
- 40" TV - $200 new at time, got on clearance for $100. Now ~$130-150
- 24" gaming monitor (used) - $200 retail discontinued, paid $120 used, $100 on ebay now
- 4 Hard Drive dock (gift) - $100
- RGB keyboard pad (gift) - $40
- keyboard base - $120
- White switches - $40
- Custom etsy keys - $40
- Logitech mouse - $80
- USB Hub (Ebay) - $37
- Stream Deck (Ebay) - $80
- Microphone (Used Ebay) - $70, new is $140
- Headphones -$100
Total Spent - $787 (927 if free was included)
All in - I’m at about $2k and can run Space Marine 2 and Warzone.
I don’t buy it either. My PC + an upgrade 3 years later (with a Ryzen 5800X and a used RTX 3090!) cost me about €2,000. If you want to push it, you add the TV (€1,000) because it serves as a monitor and the whole home cinema setup because the computer is hooked to it (probably about €1,000 as well).
That’s 4k and I’m stretching it. Buy a good monitor for €300, monitoring speakers or headphones for €250 and you’re already set for a high end experience.
As for games… C’mon, y’all know we sail the high seas.
I can see how it would get to 5K including games over a long enough period of time but realistically most hobbies accrue cost over time.
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my current hobby has so far cost me about $5k over 10 years
Honestly, 500 bucks a year is not that much to spend on a hobby as long as you’re enjoying yourself.
trudat
Do we just guess what that hobby is?
I don’t mean this to come across as rude, but why would you make this comment and not mention the hobby; without it the comment is pretty useless.
i dink around with welding. clear?
Crystal.
I could have guessed until the end of time and welding probably wouldn’t have been a guess.
That’s a cool hobby. I know if I had a welder I wouldn’t be able to just not weld random things.
its a serious addiction. very hard to leave it alone sometimes.
As long as it’s not detrimental to other areas of your life, I don’t see that as a bad thing.
a few blisters is a small price to pay for the satisfaction
It’s detrimental to isolated pieces of metal.
You will be assimilated.
I got a couple Rubik’s cubes for my kids a few years ago for nostalgia and they didn’t want anything to do with them once they realized it wasn’t easy to fix.
I tried to encourage them to keep plugging at it but they said “how am I supposed to do this if you can’t?” I realized they had a point so I downloaded an illustrated book that takes you step by step through the beginner method, and after a couple of hours I solved it!
I felt like I had climbed Everest and the first thing my kids did was scramble it again as soon as I showed them. That was the beginning of me getting into cubing as a hobby, and I have to say it’s one of the LEAST expensive hobbies I’ve ever been a part of!
Like with any hobby there are entry-level cubes and then enthusiast cubes that are more feature-rich and expensive. But the Delta between the two is surprisingly small. The cube that I use the most is one that has won world records and it was about $20 I think?
I have bought several variations of the 3X3 and other form factors. I have also bought a few as gifts as well as a Bluetooth connected cube with an accompanying robot and I don’t think I’ve spent more than $300-$350 total for the lifetime of the hobby.
That said you could easily be competitive with a world class cube, a timer, a mat, and some “Cube Lube” for maintenance all for about $60-$80 no prob. It’s about the only hobby I have my wife fully endorses, lol.
I was reading your post and I briefly thought you were trying to say it IS expensive, not that it is not. And I was like is this guy on crack, cubing is cheap as chips.
Anywho, glad to see I was wrong. I learned cubing at the same time as my buddies kids did, and while I never got faster than I think a minute and a half? They are well under a minute now, it’s crazy.
I still cube occasionally, but mostly just to fidget while watching TV 🤷♂️ Also so I don’t forget how to do it.
Yeah, it’s cheap. Sorry for the lack of clarity and brevity. Lol.
I couldn’t get any faster than about a minute and a half using the beginner method so I decided to try learning CFOP. At first I got way slower because there are more algorithms to remember but I saw how some others have modified it a bit to make it simpler and practiced when I could (i.e. watching TV like you lol) and now I can solve it in about a minute.
That’s clearly not competitive in any way but I’m really just competing against myself so I’m happy with any Improvement. That’s light years better than where I started and to people that don’t know there are 11-year-olds online doing it in 8 seconds, my one minute is pretty impressive! 😂 Happy cubing, my friend!
hobbyfamilyWe are not a waste of money!
Having a hobby in a price gouging capitalist hellscape.
Never get into actual warhammer, only videogames.
Or go for the cheaper alternatives. Or just buy a 3D printer, so you can have beautiful, unpainted armies that’ll never see any action, just like 70% of all GW models!
Me who enjoys reselling as a hobby.
What do you resell?
Mostly vintage electronics, (PC, cassette decks, VCRs, a laser disc player one time), cassette/Video tapes, I have about 1,000 NOS vacuum tubes I need to go through. I also like to sell car parts, but I don’t go out of my way to look for them. I kind of just like fixing that kind of stuff as a hobby, but don’t really want to be a hoarder. I also find other oddball stuff once in awhile like really rare books or collectibles like vintage toys. It’s all usually stuff that is hard to find so the people buying it are really happy to find it.
Gunpla gives me great joy, until I look at my bank account.
Gaming used to not be like that, but now a good GPU alone costs 800 to 2500 bucks. Sure you get away with cheaper components but at what cost, you got to be patient gamer to enjoy this endeavor.
Bought a 4070 super for 600. They have come down a lot
The Main Reason I became an Indie Gamer.
It’s not that I can’t afford it, it’s just that it isn’t worth it for me.
my gpu is 8 years old, and it runs everything perfectly. I’ve never had any issues with high quality shaders in Minecraft, and i have a million mods in Teardown and i don’t really see it lag unless im testing my PCs limits lol
i really really don’t think you need to spend nearly that much money to enjoy video games
You just should play different games.
For example ping pong runs on integrated gpus.
My 15 years old i5 750 upgraded with a 1060 can play almost anything. You could literally play great free games for the next 10 years on it without spending a dime. Maybe some gamers are doing too much? There’s no need to upgrade your pc every years to get 2 more fps…
Me with 30+ Libreboot desktops/laptops.
Never get into Modular Synthesizers.
My bike is my pride and joy but good god she is also a money sink.
Do you mean bicycle or motorcycle? What do you find yourself spending most of your bike money on? Most of my bicycle maintenance is for brake pads and the occasional replacement chain; not as many replacing tire tubes after getting nicer tires. Although I haven’t been able to enjoy mine lately after putting on weight and 4 seats I’ve tried still make my butt numb after 20 minutes.
I ride downhill mtb. Most of my money is spent on replacing broken parts from crashes and maintenance. Can’t have things failing when you’re flying down a mountain.
I do some cross stitching and it hasn’t been bad. Even using kits instead of doing custom ones. I’ve got like $120 CAD worth of large kits and, at the rate I’m going, they’ll probably last me a decade or maybe my daughter will inherit some of them.
I’m well into year 2 of working on the current one.
