As a member of the National Guard, I guess you can say my other hobby is the military. Between that, work, home and pinball, I don't really have time for another hobby. Since I get paid for the Guard (not all the time I put in, but it generates an income), I guess you can say it is cheaper. Since we live on a lake, we have a boat too, but I wouldn't call that a hobby - more like another responsibility so the family and other people can enjoy boating

Why is hunting so expensive? Are you including all the target practice supplies and travel maybe? Just curious as a long-time outdoorsman.

Cheap hobbies i have had in the past in no particular order;

Home brewed beer
Home distilled spirits
Home butchered meat and charcuterie
Home vegetable gardening
Home grown pot
Home grown gourmet mushrooms

Can you see a common thread?

I'm starting to get into stargazing. For $200 you can get some really nice binoculars and a tripod.

and run your business from home (or have home in your business, whichever it is )

Collecting naval lint. Free and fun.

LTG : )

You can get a pretty decent 114mm aperture telescope for that price too, with smart phone/software interface - here is a picture of the moon taken with an 114mm telescope.

With the binoculars you can also do bird watching. I wouldn't say it is a hobby, but we do keep a feeder stocked off of our back deck and get a lot of song birds, etc. We did the oriole feeding for a couple of years and would catch them as they migrated through.

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Yes, i live in my warehouse. All my business's have started from my hobbies, including Stilldragon Australia which currently supports my exe hobbies like pinballs, travel and m/cycles.

You can follow in Graham Barker's footsteps...

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Marine and movie model collector. I have a movie replica of Orca, and two Titanics I’ll be working on. One is 4.5 feet, the other is 6.3 feet long. Bruce the shark museum quality replica.

Into cars too. My princess 1976 Monte Carlo 400 ($20k in drivetrain alone) and my 2010 Dodge Challenger SRT8.

Other than that I work as a dealership mechanic ALL the time. Can that be considered a hobby?

wood working, Photography , RC (cars,plane,helicopter,quads.) Marine aquariums with live coral. 3d printing , computer building, Get tired of one pick up the other... rinse and repeat. add welding and metal fab. and most enjoyable right now spending time with my 4year old grand daughter.

My Ferrari collection is coming along nicely

As opposed to say, army lint?

(J/K, but I’m sure you meant “navel” lint)

In response to the OP...you say

We don’t all have deep pockets. You’ve gotta purchase a machine first and a decent machine these days cost real money.

I’ll meet you at the boat club after we get back from our hunting trip so we can discuss our vacations then we’ll go rip it up at the track. Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaap

Oh I've been in to lots of things over the years. R/C cars/boats/planes. Antique and modern toy trains. Antique toys. Been through a gamut of classic muscle cars and custom rods and pickups. Used to build computers for fun. Now, I just take it simple. Are hookers and blow considered a hobby?

Another "hobby" of mine is collecting vintage signs. It's not a cheap hobby any longer just like pinball.

John

Second that, 3 yr and 1 yr Granddaughters. Everything else ( guitar builds/repair/ wooden boats/antique restoration/motor builds of all kinds/photograph restoration/ etc. takes a back seat.

Uuuummm-House payment,Gas and Electricity,Watering the grass,Food,Gasoline & Automobile upkeep,Petfood,Clothes,Bar Soap 50 hour work weeks- Rinse Repeat for the last 59 years
Am just hangin in there-fortunate as hell to have 2 nice newer machines...........Oh the new AFM Remake is on my Visa card too.
Cool that you are doing well for yourself and supporting your diverse hobbies !!

Could it be that there are people without 5 dirt bikes, boat clubs, 20k vacations which to whom pinball is indeed a relative large expense?

I collect spores, molds and fungus.

Wow you’re a douche bag

Baking bread. My soudough starter is flour and water. The rye flour is a little more expensive and the rye whiskey is the biggest expense.

I had part of a slinky once, but I straightened it...

I used to be into model railroading - sink hole for $$. No ROI there. I agree pinball is better than most hobbies as the resale value holds and the machines don't have many consumables other than new rubbers, lights, a broken plastic or occasional fried board. No registrations, license or insurance to buy. No need to travel to enjoy.

But my photography has a much better return as I sell my photographs.

OP is obviously waiving his dick around. Charming.

No no. No. That wasnt your point. It was to brag. An odd face save you attempted, but you can't fool us.

Fishing.

I bought the boat in 2005, and I did my homework to pick a type of boat that would hold its value well.

Now if I want to fish, gas is about 20 bucks, bait 6 bucks, insurance 300 a year, and registration around 70 bucks for 3 years.

The way boat prices have been going up I may could get pretty close to what I originally paid for the boat now if I wanted to sell it.

3d printing. Can get into it with a new machine from Creality for less than $250. Compliments pinball.

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I guess it all depends on how wealthy one is, and how much disposable income he has, wouldn't you say?

From what you wrote, I see at least 31K from you in disposable income. That amount represents half of many family's annual income. Not everyone has an IT job or lives in the coastal cities. Not that you do, but I'm just sayin'. Many of us have been in the hobby for a very long time, 20 years or more, and have slowly worked our collection up from the beaters we found to having one or a few nice games, all while running our households and our lives. We have relatively humble incomes.

In the last, say, 15 years, there have been some very wealthy guys who have joined the pinball hobby, buying in high, buying the top tier games, price no object, having a known collection, rare games too, making a splash, walking among the rest of us (or above the rest of us, no insult intended). I have heard of one rich pinballer, maybe there are others, who goes from avocation to avocation, buys in high, get familiar with the hobby, and once he figures it all out and does all that he thinks he can do, he gets bored and moves on to some other hobby that he has not conquered yet. I can't decide if his situation is enviable or even has to be.

Is it possible that the pinball hobby eventually increased in value just enough to have approached your activity level, making you notice it, bringing you into it? For instance, do you eschew hobbies that are truly inexpensive, or does the excitement of high value provide the energy you need?

On a somewhat related note, I read an interesting article where people who grew up in wealthy families explained the assumptions they made about life and the rude shock they learned once leaving home. For instance, they thought everybody had a maid, or a vacation home, or a private plane, or ate at restaurants every day, or never worried about price tags, etc. One example that amused me was a woman who had believed that people who did not immediately run out and upgrade their iphone each time were simply too lazy to walk to the apple store. LOL

Total flex by OP. But if it’s all about money, then don’t forget about the opportunity cost.

Couple thoughts .
Immedeat cost parts for broken things $
Cost inventory so you will have needed parts next time $$$
Multiply cost inventory X different company games you own . Classic Stern , Bally, Data East , Sega , Bally/William's, Gottlieb, Capcom .
6X$$$=$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Divided storage bins for parts $
Tools $
Board repairs $$
A rare game specific part surfaces , you may need someday . Could be many $$$
Cost / maintainence pinhauler vehicle.
Spousal bribes you bought another title $$$

Buying couple games does not make one a collector . Collection costs much higher in my experience.

Shane

I haven’t been into pinball as a hobby quite as long as you, but definitely long enough to have seen this humble-flex movie many times before.

Like you said, lots of new blood in the recent past who love to telegraph their wealth (or more often, I suspect, appearance of wealth); they come here, make a splash for a time, lose interest, and then it’s on to the next “expensive” pursuit.

And, to answer your (probably rhetorical) questions regarding motivation, I’d say the answer is definitely “YES”, many of these guys seem to be chasing something deeper than mere hobby satisfaction. I think some folks are just hopelessly enslaved to the “he who dies with the most toys wins” ethos. Unfortunately, this outlook is unlikely to ever result in true contentment or satisfaction, so one gets stuck endlessly running in a hamster wheel always chasing bigger and better; just look at all the Pinsiders who are stuck on the idea that the size of one’s “collection” is a proxy for one’s devotion to the hobby! These are the same kind of folks who are unable to enjoy an inherently cheap activity like birdwatching unless they accumulate an arsenal of $3k binoculars and $5k spotting scopes.

(And, in my opinion their ability to endlessly buy their way out of their short attention-spans is NOT “enviable”! My younger self would have probably disagreed, but hopefully I’m wiser now.)

LEGOs . I am bit bad.

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Pandemic got me into on of the best most relaxing cheap hobbies

Jigsaw Puzzles

Buy a $13 1,000 pc puzzle
Put on some good music and pour some whiskey and you have hours of entertainment.

And the best thing is, nothing breaks

I can't seem to figure out why people think that dirt bikes, hunting and $20,000 vacations are expensive. I just sold my Huracan STO for $85,000 less than I paid for it. The staff manning my super yacht all wanted a raise, so that's going to cost me another $140,000/year.

And my repair guy just told me my private jet needs an engine overhaul.

/Sarcasm

A family favorite when the kids come home. Someone usually hids a piece to get to put the last one in (ok, it's usually me). Good opportunity to have causal conversations, no emotionally charged topics allowed. Puzzle type varies by who picks it (me, pinballs, drive-ins, Americana, daughters and wife - animals, landscapes)

This is why, in the private jet hobby, I keep telling people how important it is to learn to fix them yourself!!! When will people learn?!

It's humble brag time!

I've been very pleased with my Rolls-Royce, as the beast has cost very little to maintain, thank Sky Fairy. Quality build of course, and checked very, very carefully before I bought, as one major fault could be a write-off financially. It's like buying a white elephant which doesn't eat. Awesome.

Humble brag ends.

C'mon bro. I've been here 12 years and not once have I talked about myself doing physique and lifting competitions, and tried to pass it off as saying "anyone here into casual fitness?"

12 years. Twelve years and nobody here knows. Because I thought it would be bragging. But you've been here less than a year and came out with that stuff. At least give it some time, man.

So listen. Sorry for being a jerk, but just ease into it.

Gourmet dining

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Fixing old transistor radios. Compared to pinball it's chicken feed but there are some old pocket radios folks pay over a grand for.

Hobbies change over time...

years ago, it would have been computers (which was expensive comparatively then) and video games

I started buying pinball back then, but even back then space/prices became an issue so I stopped buying

then it was motorcycles

then it was music gear

then it was video/audio

then pinball again

mind you...all of these hobbies are still going on simultaneously, but interest varies year to year. Right now I am heavy into pinball again.

Pinball is the most expensive hobby I have, it is actually more expensive then the muscle cars I own.

Doing all your own work saves a hella lot of money.

I have quite a bit of money tied up in pins. But over the years, I have not lost anything. I've lost a few bucks on games, and I've made a few bucks on games. I've put too much money into a restoration of a game I loved, and I've bought cheap games that were amazingly fun.

Overall this is why I've never let a couple hundred dollars stand between me and a game. I'm not going to get ripped off and pay a huge premium, but if I'm close to the sellers price, I'll have the game.

I think if I sold them all right now, I'd end up a bit above, or at worst even. There is an opportunity cost, where that money might have earned me more money if it had been sitting elsewhere, but really, not much. And I've owned a bunch of pins and had a blast with them. So I win.

I can't name a single other hobby I've done that I was able to get all my money back in the end.

Seriously though, I love that stuff.

Pinball has hidden costs that can make it more expensive in the long run, but it depends on how far you go with your "following" of the hobby. I usually go to 3 or 4 pinball/retro arcade conventions (Pin Expo, TPF, CAX, Zapcon) plus I make a pilgrimage to the PHOF in Vegas at least once a year. I'm in a local Pinball league and we have a monthly tournament. Now add in pinball consumables, spare parts, repair time, tools and you can get your spending up there, and this is not including the costs of any new machines.

My other hobbies are mostly maker based, such as 3D printing, CNC wood working, electronics, computers, virtual reality, video pinball cabinet (built my own), plus my past hobbies have included RC vehicles, target shooting, pyrotechnics,