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gr1m_dan wrote:That was until I went to the local official Harley Davidson shop with my Dad the other day to buy him something for his birthday.My god it made GW look almost peasant like in its prices!

Example - 6 screws for some part on the engine. Just small screws, nothing fancy. £15!!!!!!!

A badge that goes on the engine cover - £90. Yes. £90 for a badge about the size of my hand with an eagle on it.

The list is endless and the prices are unbelievable. A guy bought a bike for £12'000 and spent £27'000 doing it up!!!!

So - does anyone else have or seen hobbies that sometimes put our plastic men in perspective? How much have you spent on other hobbies? I'm a semi-pro musician and have about £5'000 worth of basses, about £2'500 worth of amps and other various parts. I earn money from it though so it's paid for itself but still. Expensive hobby!

(This isn't a GW suck up thread, just shedding some light on how expensive other hobbies can be)

Flying. I'm working on it, and its 200 bucks to start. and $1,000's to continue. Want a reroll? Not happening if you dump one.

Death or Glory, baby!!!

Scuba Diving. 150.bucks for the lessions, upwards to 3,000 for a rig, and then we start talking about the boat. Of course theres the divespots and everything else...

Boating... Bring Out Another Thousand. I found one, can get it for free if I want it, and I'm already looking at over 5,000 bucks to get it up and seaworthy. Do I dare take the challenge?

GW expensive? No, it's just overpriced.

Model trains.

Enough said.

And when you're done all that set up... it goes around in a circle.

You know what else is expensive? Rent. If I kept the $450 a week I spend on rent, I could buy a new army every week! Also, the sum total of all my warhammer collection pales in comparison to my property collection, those are upwards of $300 000 PER MODEL!! I guess I should stop bitching when GW hikes the price of my favourite 0.50c lump of plastic box set by 25% to $70 for no apparent reason.

piperider361 wrote:Shooting. Can't resell that lead when you're done with it.

you can reload the cases thu or a 22 then you could care less abour reloading. a single stage press like a rock chucker should like 100 bucks.

Almost all my other hobbies are more expensive then Games Workshop. Horseback riding, Kayaking, Fencing, Martial Arts, Golf, Racing, like most fun adult hobbies is more expensive Games Workshop. Its just that you pay the price for these hobbies and know what you are getting and that your going to have a good time.

What is annoying about Games Workshop not that they are expensive but the lack of quality in their product for the price you pay. Their rules are terribly written and require faqs for corrections just look at Codex Grey Knights. Their so called Finecast models which should be immaculate and better then the usual model have miscasts and missing pieces that require extra work to fix that isn't very enjoyable. For the premium you pay they should have great rulesets and great models. They don't.

I seem to only enjoy hobbies I can barely afford:

1: 4x4 truck (current project is a motor+transmission swap that will probably cost in excess of $5000. 8.2L of gas guzzling fury!)

2. Firearms. I almost embarrassed at how much I spent on my M1A1 Scout rifle. And it's not even 'done up'!

3. Gaming. PC and console. Console games are $60 a pop, and keeping your PC up to date get's costly. I think I've spend about $1200 twice to build towers.

4. WH40K. Two unfinished armies of probably around 3000pts each if all totaled up. Not to mention airbrush, compressor and all the other hobby supplies.

Freestyle scootering 200 bucks for a deck http://www.shop.inward-scooters.com/product.sc;jsessionid=919615CB72C006EEAC3B685ED9300E69.qscstrfrnt06?productId=411
20 bucks for bar grips
20-80 bucks for A SINGLE WHEEL
10bucks for grip tape
70-100 bucks for bars
40 bucks for a brake
60-130 bucks for a fork its not an eating utensil it carries your bars and front wheel
70 bucks for a decent compression clamp

List goes on...............
My scooter cost about 600 dollars and im ready to sell it, buy this cheap onehttp://www.maddgear.com/main.php?pg=products&c=31 and get minis ^^

One of my hobbies, collecting medals and decoration from WWII era Third Reich/US/GB/Japan/USSR:

How about $400-$500 for a WWII era Iron Cross First Class? Or $4,500-$6,000 for Cased German Cross in Gold. Chained Model 1936 SS-Leader Dagger? $25,000-$40,000 (depends on maker and condition). Soviet Order of Lenin 1st class made at the Moscow state mint (prior to 1930)? $65,000-$100,000. WWII Era Navy Cross: $900 w/light blue Navy issue case + $400

WWII Era Medal of Honor: Prison

One of my other hobbies, gun collecting:

(Un-messed with, no rebuilds) WWII M1 Carbine: $700-$5,000, Unmodified Gas Trap M1 Garand: $10,000-$25,000, Colt SA Army from the late 1800's: $75,000-$100,000, Colt Walker (conditions on these range from rusted hunk of gak to nearly brand new [side note: these were made in 1846-1847]): $75,000-$450,000

I have 62 in total, most of which are old and none of which are this rare (except for the one below)

Another hobby, Civil War memorabilia:

Texas Coat Button $4,500-$10,000 / CSA Griswold & Gunnison Revolver (of which I have one of the 3,700 made): $7,000-$16,000



Hobbies are all frivolity in hindsight, but damn are they fun.

For the record... fishing is the sport that the most money is spent on. Of course that is counting all of the boats etc. but it really adds up. Im gonna have to say its not much of a sport when you own all the sonar etc. more of a hobby. for me i am going to have to say that GW is my biggest most expensive hobby. Then women.

@ OP

I have a Harley...and play 40k...and Malifaux...and smoke cigars...

Expensive hobbys are fun hobbys!

As a few others have said, real steel firearms are pretty expensive.

IMI Jericho 941: $600 USD (used)
50 rounds 9x19mm: Around $20 (ugh)

Then there's targets, range rental time, etc. And then there's the occasional "...is that an FN Five-seveN in the rental case? Can I go shoot it?" moments.

Airsoft is pretty expensive too.

JG M16: $110
x5 or so extra mags: $60
x2 Extra Batteries: $40
ALICE Gear: $30 ish
Cammies: $50 ish
Sidearm (Jericho 941): $60
Extra Mag: $25

...and you get the idea. My airsoft stuff, if sold for the price that I paid for it, would probably net me a whole FW army.

And school is worst of all...

I used to own and race stockcars (NASCAR) at the local southwest tracks.
I'd probably burn all of my race winnings plus 10-20k out of pocket a year for that little hobby.
How do you make a small fortune in auto racing?
Start with a large fortune.

Re-enactment:

Lance: £40
Sword: £130
Plate Armour: £500
Boots/Clothing/Jack/etc: £200

The look on someone's face when you take them out: Priceless

(and I didn't bother with tent, bed and bedding, all the living history stuff, not to mention transport to and from events)



The problem with the thread, though, is that we all know there are other hobbies which are more expensive than GW. The point is that if you compare GW like-for-like to other miniature wargaming companies then they charge a premium for simply having a larger customer base.

Yes, there are other companies out there that charge as much or more than GW per figure, for example Corvus Belli who make Infinity - but you need very few models, they are some of the finest sculpts out there and the rules are free. GW change to resin and jack the price up by 30%, Mantic change to resin and drop the price by 50%.

Is GW more expensive than other hobbies? No
Is GW more expensive than it should be given its product and competition? Yes

Glad the majority of people on here have posted the prices of their other hobbies. Calvin has got it right above and probably something I should have put in my OP. Just for the sake of it though I just wanted to see what people spent on other hobbies. Simple as that.


It was only meant as light hearted fun and I apologise to those who have felt the need to reply with sarcasm and rage.

I am an archer and that can be expensive so for me it is around £400 for a bow and around £120 for arrows (witch need repairing once a week cos I am great!) and this is not the to of the rage stuff (which for a hole set of arrows and a bow cane cost you easily £2000+) so its not to bad tbh. i have a good club (that is not to dear) and spend probably £70 a year in club fees.

Mad4Minis wrote:

assultmarine wrote:airsoft....£200 for a decent rifle, 5000 rounds is £10 and i could run through that in about an hour,

Try real guns.

Yeah! Real men shoot each other with real guns!

dkellyj wrote:How do you make a small fortune in auto racing?
Start with a large fortune.

Sounds about right to me. The only way to make money doing anything is to start out with a good bit of it first.

Hi all.
Compared to other table top minature wargaming products ,the GW Hobby is expencive.

Can we stop bragging about how much money we waste on other stuff please.

Lanrak wrote:Hi all.
Compared to other table top minature wargaming products ,the GW Hobby is expencive.

Can we stop bragging about how much money we waste on other stuff please.

Isn't that the whole point of this thread?

and while GW is the most expensive tabletop retailer, I think the costs pale in comparasion to mostly everything else people do.

i know someone who collects old WW2 stuff (nothing in particular, just stuff like medals, helmets, clothes, diaries etc.) and he's spent more on that alone than I have earned in my current life.

and remember, spending money on something you like is not wasted. its only wasted when its not interesting.

yea, GW games are pricey for what they are, btu in the grand sceme of things you can get alot of use out of minis.

now as others say with pc gaming I have more money than I'd like to admit in my rig, I tend to buy new shiny and sell old shiny

but the biggest money sink is probably working out, whey i use runs $40+ for 3 lb, and I'll go through 1 1/2 - 2 tubs a month, the preworkout formula is about $35-40 a tub and one tub of that a month, vitamins and other supliments are at least $100 monthly... comparativly GW products last longer for much less... but they aren't as good for your health (though i will say where i play war gamers aren't as overweight as the video gamers probably from standing so much of the day )

Mud bogging is an expensive hobby, its the main reason I stopped doing it. Insanely fun but holy gak was that costly. It was $50 for a season pass, which is pretty much a whole year, so not bad, but just to go, I spent a fortune in gas, my truck drank gas like crazy (9 miles a gallon in 2 wheel drive) so just to go it was 30-40 bucks and that was a couple years ago when gas wasnt near 4 bucks. So 30-40 just to go, thatd be like paying 30 bucks JUST to get to play 40k. And that was if nothing broke. My brother blew a 300 dollar tire on one run, so that was a $340 weekend there. My buddy Tony, broke his front axle, so again that was a couple hundred bucks, and we were the "poor guys" in that hobby. Some guys have $3k dollar motors and theyll stick em in a pit and get stuck, but to prove they are hardasses they would gun it to try and get out, ooops, blown motor, gotta put another 2 grand in it to fix it.
The worst this guy we called betterbeaters, had a super duper badass stroker motor and a professionally done transmission. He went through a pit, and stressed it so hard that the tail of his tranny snapped off, sent the drive shaft through the floor board of his jeep, and when that happened, it over revved his engine which caused the piston to blow out the side and in doing so, shrapnel hit his steering shaft and broke that as well. So I think in that one hole he spent around 8 THOUSAND dollars to make it halfway through.



So yea....warhams is pricey at times....but you really can put it into perspective

12thRonin wrote:

keisukekun wrote:Shooting definitely. I have a .45 so I pay about $100 for 250 bullets. I usually savor them but its really easy to go through them all in one session.

Want/need a new car too and that's expensive.

Save your brass and reload it. I shoot .45 for about $.30/round with Hornady FMJ or JHP bullets depending on what I'm trying out. Rolling your own is fun as well since you can tailor the load however you want it. There are cheaper bullets you can find but I like the Hornady's.

Too true!

I reload for 223/556, 30-30 Win, 8MM Mauser and 9MM Luger. The reloading equipment costs about $200, plus $40 for the dies.

With the amount of shooting I do, it only makes sense to reload. I pay $60/year for use of indoor and outdoor range at my club, $30 for my LTCF (License to Carry Firearm) which covers me for 5 years, about $20 for powder that will do about 2000 rounds, and say for 8MM, about $20 for 100 rounds of 175 grain bullets (not completed rounds, those cost $30 for 20 rds).

The cost of the guns wasnt too much either. About $700 or so for the custom built AR (took a year, bought parts as they went on sale), $169 for the 30-30 lever (someone owed me $$), 1915 Mauser was a gift and the Ruger 9mm cost about $350.

piperider361 wrote:Shooting. Can't resell that lead when you're done with it.

Came here to say target shooting is probably the most expensive hobby I have, and you beat me to it. Reloading ammo can save you money but it also takes time and in some cases reloading doesn't save you all that much money since certain calibers are still sort of cheap.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Oh and I will say the thing about war gaming is, models never really go obsolete. I played back in the early 90s originally when I was in middle school. Once I hit my teens and got a car and a job I was more interested in chasing girls and sneaking out to see live music. Fast forward 15 years later I decided to rescue my minis from my parent's basement. Found the tackle boxes, dusted them off and inside I found all my minis for the most part, which still work to this day. All my 2nd edition space wolves, IG, Nids, Eldar, lizardmen, and Orks still work till this day. So, getting back into the hobby wasn't all that expensive. I just bought the new rule sets, and a couple of boxed sets to modernize my armies form 2nd edition 5th (4th to 8th in fantasy) and now I am back in the game.

Initial cost of ownership may be a bit high compare to some hobbies, but overall cost of ownership war gaming is rather cheap. Anything with technology you are forced to upgrade every so often, where as my miniatures from Rogue Trader still work.

Crom wrote:
Came here to say target shooting is probably the most expensive hobby I have, and you beat me to it. Reloading ammo can save you money but it also takes time and in some cases reloading doesn't save you all that much money since certain calibers are still sort of cheap.

True but even reloading 9mm ($10.47 at your local Wally World for Federal Premium) for about the same price (to me) gives me more piece of mind. It's loaded to how I want it, with the bullet I want (147gn JHP 9mm is hard to find in most stores).

About the only time I go by rounds off the shelf is for my .40's or if I need to replentish my brass pile with brass I know hasn't been shot alot. .40's are quite hot rounds and go from good to kaboom pretty quickly.

12thRonin wrote:

Crom wrote:
Came here to say target shooting is probably the most expensive hobby I have, and you beat me to it. Reloading ammo can save you money but it also takes time and in some cases reloading doesn't save you all that much money since certain calibers are still sort of cheap.

True but even reloading 9mm ($10.47 at your local Wally World for Federal Premium) for about the same price (to me) gives me more piece of mind. It's loaded to how I want it, with the bullet I want (147gn JHP 9mm is hard to find in most stores).

About the only time I go by rounds off the shelf is for my .40's or if I need to replentish my brass pile with brass I know hasn't been shot alot. .40's are quite hot rounds and go from good to kaboom pretty quickly.

Yeah I hear ya man. I am definitely not knocking it. My uncle is a very avid gun collector (has 100s) and reloads his own ammo and casts his own bullets (dude has endless amounts of ammo) and he loves creating his own ammo. He has that hand loaders bible and looks up the ballistics of all the different rounds and loads so if he wants a bullet that travels a 932.6 feet per a second he can load his ammo to do exactly that.

I personally don't have the space to set up a reloading work bench. I also buy a lot of milsurp rounds. I got 1,000 7.62x54R steel core Czeh Republic milsurp rounds for my Mosin for only $90 at a gun show. So far not a single one has given me any grief. Fired probably 200 rounds out of that 1,000 so far.

Grot 6 wrote: GW expensive? No, it's just overpriced.

Nuf said.

Hand loading is a hobby in itself.

For that matter, some people build their own boats, or bows and arrows, or sculpt and cast their own wargame figures.

So, if we get back on the main topic, we see that GW models are 25% to 300% more expensive than equivalent models from other wargame companies. The rules also are Not Cheap™.

That is what leads people to complain about the cost of GW as a hobby.

My sister wanted to start horse riding - 20£ for a one hour lesson ! Horses cost money just standing still :

Stable Equipment £200
Pre-purchase Vetting (per horse) £200
First aid/ grooming equipment £50
Riding clothes and equipment £250
Leather Saddle £600
Brand new English leather bridle with bit £100
Outdoor Rugs (per rug) £100
Indoor Rugs (per rug) £70
Annual Livery Costs

Full Livery (Per Annum) £5,200
Part Livery (Per Annum) £3,640
Working Livery (Per Annum) £2,600
Grass Livery (Per Annum) £1,560

Shoeing (every 6 weeks) £645
Specialist shoeing (every 4 weeks) £1,950
Trimming (every 6 weeks) £215
Tetanus & Equine Influenza Vaccination excluding vet call out fee £120
Worming Products (1 Syringe every 8 weeks) £78
Shavings (using 2 bales per week £728
Straw (small bales) (using 2 bales per week) £364
Hay (small bales) (using 4 bales a week) £936
Haylage (small bales) (using 3 bales a week) £936
Bag of horse/ pony cubes (using 1 bag every 3 weeks) £122
Bag of chaff (using 1 bag every 2 weeks for) £182

Plus Licensing Fees, Insurance Fees, Staff Wages, Building Purchase / Rent / Morgage, Vehicle Purchase + Maintence and many more things which could add up to over £100,000 a year.

Wow. My brother plays guitar, and it's pretty expensive. I might play, though, it's really awesome.

Kilkrazy wrote:Hand loading is a hobby in itself.

For that matter, some people build their own boats, or bows and arrows, or sculpt and cast their own wargame figures.

So, if we get back on the main topic, we see that GW models are 25% to 300% more expensive than equivalent models from other wargame companies. The rules also are Not Cheap™.

That is what leads people to complain about the cost of GW as a hobby.

The main topic was over priced hobbies, not just GW. Though I will say the overall cost of war gaming is pretty cheap compared to other hobbies. You are a console gamer, you gotta buy a new console every so often, and games and controllers and such, and pay for some online services, etc. With war gaming the best part is that your minis from the 80s still work, albeit they aren't as cool as some of the modern models, but they still work.

I think overall cost of ownership is low but initial cost is high comparatively in the gaming world. One firearm can equal the cost of several armies, a car or motor cycle can cost more than every army. I think the biggest gruff gamers have is that the technology making the models is getting better and they are being produced cheaper, but the prices are never going down, and the hikes have been outrageous. Back when I started you could get 2 metal terminators in a blister pack for $6, so $18 got you a squad of 6 termies, where now it is a $50 box set for 5.

Crom wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:Hand loading is a hobby in itself.

For that matter, some people build their own boats, or bows and arrows, or sculpt and cast their own wargame figures.

So, if we get back on the main topic, we see that GW models are 25% to 300% more expensive than equivalent models from other wargame companies. The rules also are Not Cheap™.

That is what leads people to complain about the cost of GW as a hobby.

The main topic was over priced hobbies, not just GW. Though I will say the overall cost of war gaming is pretty cheap compared to other hobbies. You are a console gamer, you gotta buy a new console every so often, and games and controllers and such, and pay for some online services, etc. With war gaming the best part is that your minis from the 80s still work, albeit they aren't as cool as some of the modern models, but they still work.

NOT AS COOL!!! i always like it when i see really old minis