What We Lose When We're Priced Out of Our Hobbies | Hacker News Reader

What We Lose When We're Priced Out of Our Hobbies

theatlantic.com

35 pointsfortran7717 comments

I don't entirely agree with the writer on the cost of shooting and fishing hobbies being prohibitive per se. There are entry costs, but less than say, video gaming which is more popular among youg people. My personal theory is that the people who are into these hobbies are REALLY into these hobbies, to the point of cost-no-object spending which can encourage some tremendously expensive products and services. What I have no way of testing is whether we're more into fewer, heavily invested hobbies than a wider spread of shallower ones.

Anecdotally, I can shoot trap with an inexpensive shotgun ($300 or so) and fish for salmon with a similar rod and reel. I'm spending far more in ongoing costs in trips on fuel, food, and a thousand little comforts with my buddies than the initial investment. At the same time, I routinely see $5000+ (and sometimes twice that) in fine trap guns at the range, rifles that cost that alone with an equally expensive optic, and see how much money is in the guided hunt/fish business. There are whales that distort the top end of the market, but the low end has objectively never been of higher quality for the same dollars.

At the same time, I was thinking: what if the spenders in these markets just have more money?

Here's a quick report that suggests the 35-65 group where the money is is popular : https://asafishing.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/2024_ASA_E...

Rec shooting says something similar, with the 100k+ income bracket the largest: https://fishwildlife.org/mscgp/application/files/2316/8691/8...

Casually, and without a good source of historical data, what if we just have the money to play? To what degree this article becomes merely about inflation than gentrification is debatable, imo.

$300 for a shotgun vs a switch lite for the same price? Idk what ammo costs these days but surely shooting every day would cost massively more than enough switch games to keep you busy every day.

Idk, that one i find hard to square.

That brings up another dimension - $/hour. Gaming IS indisputably one of the cheapest 'modern' hobbies in terms of cost over time next to reading while shooting (or fishing) daily is something you typically only see regularly in the professional circuits.

One of the things that's hard to nail down from the article's thesis is what really costs people? Initial or ongoing costs?

Not unlike what I was saying with the top end of the fishing or shooting markets skewing what 'average' looks like, consider two things I found here:

More than half of gaming revenue is microtransactions: https://insider-gaming.com/58-of-pc-gaming-revenue-came-from...

About 10% of microtransaction customers bring in the biggest share of revenue: https://www.chriskempt.com/p/how-much-do-whales-spend

I think thrifty Switch gamers and weekend warrior beginner trap shooters are both little affordable niches in the bigger landscape of the hobby, and it's hard to know what really constitutes typical.

Not a subscriber, but the headline alone caught me off guard... knitting and fishing? These are some pretty affordable hobbies. My 14 year old has taken up knitting in a big way just using her birthday money and some needles from the local thrift store. Fishing? Sure maybe you can't afford a chartered deep sea trip, but the equipment for your local river or creek is nearly free at somebody's yard sale. Now if you want to talk about things like skiing or golfing...for that matter I've been a beekeeper but am feeling just about priced out of that as well.

> knitting

Too bad I am also not a subscriber; now I won't find the really expensive ways to knit. Do you need a golden thread?

Yarn has definitely gone up in price. Acrylic yarn is fine to get into knitting. However, if you'd like to try some better quality, it'll cost you. Knitting a blanket with cheap yarn would run about $100 (20 skeins, at a cost of $5 each).

People massively underestimate the price of these supplies.

My wife sews, and she has a small yarn collection as well, but never really got into knitting or crochet. I nearly had to contain my laughter when my mother told me that it would save us lots of money.

Sure. It costs more in fabric to make a shirt than to buy a shirt, and that’s not getting into machines. Look at us save!

Hobbies are for fun. Making things for yourself is, more often than not, crazy expensive.

Why are we all sitting here talking about an article none of us have read?

Because historically, HN was fully of interesting people with interesting things to say, where the article was a catalyst to something even better: human connection and dialog. But HN has fallen off pretty hard the past few years.

There is one link that mentions knitting wool prices have increased 56% in recent years (based on one source in Australia).

Nowhere does the author speculate that possibly, this is because the hobbies have gotten more popular and possibly more people are knitting or perhaps they're generally more interested in higher quality/more sustainable wool....

https://archive.md/rG0V4

My told a story that when they were college students and broke, they just went to a scrape yard for car parts. Today me and my homelab friends just scraping ebay and local industrial waste sites to get routers, switches, and server parts. We had a good luck with LTO-5 and LTO-6 tapes and tape libraries, also for NICs it's pretty easy to get connect-x 5 and 6 at an acceptable price, CPU/MEM are ok, motherboards are difficult. You just set a spec, buy whatever is available atm, then wait until you can get a whole server. It's often a long process, and itself can become a hobby. (took me 3mo, my friend 2 years to get an "ideal" server)

Well, pricing out is real, even the junk parts are now at least 20% pricier than pre-covid, and I really hated myself for not bidding for SN2010M at $700 ~ $1500 range. Those are beautiful beasts.

Copper-price makes my hobby of experimenting with EMP rifles so prohibitively expensive!!

Now it is all-aluminum!!!

(Bonus: Aluminum contracts and expand more making it more useful in multi-strata windings and using the expanded aluminum contacting with higher layer and in turn higher layers ... quicker.)

I bought a bunch of old film cameras in the mid-2000s fairly cheaply when people were dumping them en masse to buy digital. Film was still easy to get.

Ten years or so later, film suddenly becomes cool, prices skyrocket. Not surprising, I guess, since the supply is limited and shrinking every year. Then film itself started getting more expensive and older films discontinued.

I am able to offset some of the film cost issues by shooting mostly B&W and developing it myself. I bulk load 35mm to save even more. I use my DSLR for scanning. I do shoot color, but it's not a lot since I'm dependent on labs for the processing.

I have no idea what the Trump tariffs are going to mean for film. I love Ilford and Foma, both are imported. I'll use Kodak if I have to, but it's never my first choice.

My DSLR is a Canon APS-C model. Everything has gone mirrorless now. I don't plan to upgrade until my present camera stops working.

I mostly shoot digital but own 18 film cameras; all but 2 are 35mm. I process my own black and white, too, but lately I have my color film processed without prints or scanning. Then I scan the negatives myself. Not only are my own scans better a roll of 36 exposures costs less than $7.00. Film itself can be a little pricy but this has cut my expenses way down.

Pick hobbies that don't have expensive consumables!

Or hobbies where your labor competes with high labor prices. Working on cars for example competes with $90/hr shop rates. You start doing your own work and you’re making money. Just don’t ask me how much money I have tied up in tools.

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