Ask Lemmy

Homebrewing. Either everything you need to get started and going for like €100. Spend the rest on tools and equipment and ingredients as you go and learn what you need and why you need it.

Or, as it seems to me is the middle aged man thing to do¹, buy everything for a complete microbrewery and insist it is absolutely necessary with the best of laboratory grade equipment for your first batch of IPA that will taste like anybody else's first batch of IPA and the only solution is to keep spending another €1000 when you got it on better equipment and gadgets and dodads and quirkmaflixers in magical materials and still nobody will be impressed but that's just because you didn't have the correct temperature to the third decimal and dear we absolutely need to take a small loan on the house no listen this is an investment when I get this going hey baby wait listen...

¹ I'm a middle aged man so I'm allowed to use these words.

200-300 12" singles. Thus reducing my Discogs wantlist by about... 12%.

A lot of yarn. A few motorcycle jackets and pants. ALL of the video games. A lot of yoga accessories that I've ogled but never bought.

A mid range set of motorbike gear (dirt or road) or a very cheap registrable motorbike.

Alternatively a number of interesting secondhand cameras/lenses, the number ranging from one to many depending on what exactly. I'll admit I have actually spent near that much on two backs for my 1960s era Hasselblad so you don't even necessarily get a whole camera...

With tabletop role-playing games (I don't play D&D), a thousand bucks and you're pretty much set up for life. You can get a huge range of beautiful dice in all sizes, a nice deck of cards, a variety of tokens and you can skip miniatures to invest in bits that are more flexible. Speaking of flexibility, a big ebook reader allows you to enjoy tons of published games and only get physical box sets or books if you really desire them as artifacts. Another big advantage is that you can spend your money slowly and just enjoy what you have first.

I could get a copy of the original "White Box" Dungeons & Dragons set, although not an actual first print run copy, because those go for $20k. But I'd probably buy the last few Planescape products I'm missing, which are also unreasonably expensive for rpg books but not in the same league as the original dnd sets, and much more enjoyable to read.

A nice OLED TV. I love watching movies.

Edit: Holy cow OLED is still very expensive. I've changed my mind: projector.

Depends on the hobby because I have too many...

Photography - not much unless I buy used, which is what I usually do. So some funky old lenses and adapters to get on the body, which usually nets some fun results.

Data hoarding - a couple of hard drives. Which I should really do, I'm coming close to 5% free (which sounds like less than it is when you've got about 115tb, which is why I'm not rushing out).

Computer Vision / AI - more processing power! But I make work buy me that stuff so its fine.

General compute - about 5 more tiny/mini/micros at the usual price (plus the usual upgrades) to either ads to the cluster or make a new one! Or one or two of the newer little beasts that I will probably be waiting another year or two to pick up.

Bicycling - a good bike for getting around! My bike is about 15 years old now, it was new old stock because no one liked the color apparently - which made it about 1/2 the price of what it should have been. I've been replacing gear on it over the years, but I'm tempted to buy something new, honestly less for going fast and maybe more upright, like a hybrid. Which I can get an OK model at that price.

Not much. My main interest is digital privacy. Perhaps 10 years of service with Proton.

I don't think I need to spend that much money on my current hobbies. But I obviously could

• A real lot of pencils, a lot of Bic and a lot of paper to write with (and to make paper planes, too). Like a good chunk of a lifetime worth of supply :p
• A lot (but already a little less) of top quality watercolor paint (that I don't need to enjoy my hobby watercoloring), too many top of the line watercolor brushes (that I don't need for my hobby either) and a lot of excellent watercolor paper (that I may enjoy using but still don't really need for my hobby ;)
• The entire line of Caran d'Ache 'Luminance' colored pencils and the entire line of Faber Castell 'Polychromos' colored pencils, in multiple examples. But why would I need that many colors when I use maybe 10 or 12 regularly?
• I do a lot of scratch building also using... cardboard. SO, a 1000€ would buy a few decades, centuries?, worth of cardboard and fresh hobby blades too. But since I mostly used recycled cardboard from old packages and parcels... I won't need to buy those.

Back when I was making scale models (plastic planes and tanks) I could have easily spend that In a couple hour in any hobby shop worth shopping at, buying a few fancy model kits, too much paint and some of the fancier tools, plus reference books. Or on a single camera lens, but that is another hobby I quit practicing. Or on some rare books... which I also quit collecting. It looks like I won't be able to spend much money :p

Composer here, I could grab quite a lot! There are multiple shops in a 2.5 hour drive-radius from me that sell used instruments and audio equipment for dirt cheap. I bagged a $700 audio interface for $100 - just a single hunge! I could probably start an Elephant 6-grade recording setup with a thousand.

About one-fourth of a top-tier professional video card, or a whole -almost top-tier- consumer card. Or a relatively decent factory-made classical guitar. That being said I'd probably go for a extrawide capo to fit my ten-string instead. And then buy coke with the remaining 950$. Regular, not diet

A holiday

either 100 IEM or headphones, 1 home and portable setup or 1 thing in audiophile hobby. same with collecting pocket knives. not applicable with leather/Goodyear welt boots. probably starts at 5 pair of boots at the low budget end.

similar with coffee. it could just get you an espresso machine, or he'll just even a metal tamp. fucking crazy people those espresso drinking heathens. sips expensive bean juice

The hobbies are photography and videography, and it depends a bit on how frugal I am being.

If I limit myself to buying new stuff? Not a whole lot. Maybe a camera body or a few lenses.
But if I shop around and get stuff second hand, then I could buy so many lenses and cameras that I've been meaning to try out.

Usually I do the latter

Infinite library cards!

1 or 2 carbon bike wheels, depending on size, riding style, terrain, etc.

A decent entry-level hardtail.

A decent custom made surfboard, two very good but stock surfboards or 3-10(maybe more?) used surfboards. Or take 500 for a cheap flight to a surf destination and 500 for a board, which can get you a very good new one or 2-5 used surfboards.

20-25 Rashguards i guess

I can get a lot of weigths and a sick power rack

A new main sail

A pretty good but not fantastic camera or lens

Or a pair of boots, a great backpack, hiking trousers, helmet, harness and a "via ferrata cable kit".

Admission to all the folk dances I would visit in a year as well as the localish festivals OR admission and basic-mid range gear for a LARP fest

It varies wildly, but I'd go with the level of quality I'd be paying for, not what the most you could get for that money would be (Also, I'm in the UK, so I'm kinda just answering for a grand in GBP to save myself converting). Also, I kinda rotate my hobbies so my favourite varies based on when you're asking me. In no particular order:

Music production: a couple of Eurorack modules or some percentage of a full synth, you can get cheaper stuff, but I've probably got equivalents available at that level already. I could upgrade my keyboard to a fancy new Komplete or KeyLab one. Software wise, if all my software and vsts released new versions and I decided to lose my mind for a minute, I'd hopefully be able to cover all the typical version upgrade costs for that price. (Realistically I tend to wait until a couple of versions have passed before an upgrade if nothing jumps out at me about it)

Music listening (vinyl): 20-40 on records or a nice-enough-for-me pair of speakers. You could probably get 4 or 5 of my turntable (which would be silly) as it does the job perfectly for me.

Music listening (gigs and festivals): tickets, travel and a good chunk of my other expenses to go to Glastonbury or European festival (got decent camping gear already, so don't need to buy that). Tickets and travel, but not much for other expenses for a couple of smaller or city festivals. 10 arena gigs or 20-40 smaller gigs.

Travel: big, big holiday ~2 weeks, maybe half the hotel costs, maybe less as I tend to go all out when it's a long holiday. Shorter long weekends I'd hope to get my flights and accommodation at that price. If it's a stag do or similar, I'd hope to pretty much cover all costs for that.

Photography: I shoot full frame using a Sony alpha, so it might get me a percentage of a camera body or maybe a couple of decent second hand lenses (maybe 3 or 4 of the more entry level ones), of the lenses I'd like to buy, I think there is one I could get new for around that price.

Gaming (pc): probably a new mid-to-high-end graphics card, games wise I pretty much exclusively wait until things are on sale on Steam, so probably at least a couple of years of steam spend. Oh I could get a couple of steam decks if I had a reason to buy more than the one I've already got.

Watching football & rugby (live): I'm an Arsenal fan that lives in the north, so I'm probably only getting two chances to go for that price as I'll need to factor in travel, hotels, meals and beers. I visit some lower league grounds nearer me every now and again, I reckon a grand would pay for a season ticket and all my concessions that year plus a bit of merch at most of them. My rugby team no longer exists, but I could see them 4-5 times a year with travel etc. before they went into administration

Watching football & rugby (legally on TV): Need Sky, TNT, Amazon Prime, Premier Sports (predominantly for rugby), TV licence & if I was truly arsed about them, various one off passes for pre-season competitions. You're probably not getting a whole year for that price unless you do the threaten-to-quit-sky thing and hope they give you a decent discount, you can also get away with sharing logins for some of these, but I was answering strictly legally.

Eating a meal out (I like going to new restaurants so I guess it's a hobby): I'd probably take my partner out for dinner around my city 4-10 times for that depending where we go, a couple of courses plus a bottle of wine and maybe cocktails.

I..... was not expecting this comment to become an essay lol

I could get loads of cool liquors I've been eyeing for experimentation! Or like... one reeeeeally nice scotch.

You guys have hobbies?

Idk, a mid tier graphics card?
3 months of food?
2 months of marina?
A nice short trip/vacation (a couple of days, maybe a week)?
Rear tires coz I like them fast?
A lot of planters and automatic watering systems?
A notable addition to my home lab?

I should get a life.

Signed 1st edition hardback of New Hampshire by Robert Frost.

It'll almost buy me three quarters of an 8 heddle loom, or buy me a nice benchtop milling machine to make said loom (and many other things).

It'll buy a really great larp outfit, a barely acceptable reenactment outfit, or half of a suit of plate armor for either.