Asklemmy

Thinkpads.

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.

Coffee for sure, never saw myself owning a $300 coffee grinder a few years ago....

Smart phones and headphones aren't exactly cheap but, I have built a bit of an expensive hobby around collecting them lol

Instant (analog) photography and collecting pins and buttons. Turns out film is expensive and buying pins are expensive. Started out with friends giving me pins to stick on my bag and now I have close to hundred pins on my pin wall. At least they look pretty rad.

Knitting/crocheting and cannabis. Not (always) together. Yarn art to pass the time while sitting with my mom - I start a lot of things and always need new yarn, but I never finish anything. Cannabis because I started making candies for a sick friend and it's pretty easy to get caught up in different strains and what's on sale this week.

Fountainpens. Started with some cheap Chinese pens. Now I have multiple vintage pens and a Montblanc that I love writing with.

Guitar. Pedals, amps, cables, picks, more picks, straps, strings, mics, stands, clamps, etc all add up. Oh, and of course you're always enticed to upgrade, but you can't get rid of the one you've grown to love, so now you have n+1 guitars.

To be clear, you can do amazing things with a Fender Bullet, but it's a slippery slope for sure.

Collecting vinyl records. I started 10 years ago when you could get lots of records for 3-5$ per record. Now everyone is crazy about collecting and they can cost 40-50$. Was a great investment if I sell them. But I enjoyed collecting them regardless of value.

Running as soon as I discovered the Runningshowgeeks subreddit.

Collecting military surplus/old random military shit. Helmets, great coats, radios, a field phone, ww2 machete. Ya get the idea.

Hunting. When I was younger, poorer man I used a hand me down lever action rifle and a $5 orange vest to fill my freezer with cheap venison that I would butcher myself. for less than $100 in licenses, ammo and packaging material I could put 3 or 4 deer in the freezer in 1 weekend.

Now, I have multiple gun safes full of various guns, all of them to serve "different purposes" like long range, brush gun, restricted weapons hunting areas, slug gun restricted areas, hunting shotguns, competition shot guns. Then there's the hunting gear, knifes, packs, laser range finders, reloading equipment, hunting lease payments, guide fees, out of state application fees.

Last year I shot 1 deer and paid $140 to have someone else butcher it for me.