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eosgreen wrote:
thought for SURE this was a males shame over girls finding out about it. i never consider something i buy shameful. That is I don't buy things that are actually shameful like alcohol and cigarettes.

You could not of put this any better. My friends and I get quite a bit of stick at school for what we do, however we enjoy what we do and we are quite open about it. There is no point in trying to hide your hobby - be proud of what you do, because it is your interests, not anyone else's. As for price, there are many different ways you can lower the price, and if you take your time when painting, and you are a semi busy person, then one kit can last you a month or more, that's less then a £1 a day - a lot less than alcohol and cigarettes etc.

Try and get your nephews involved - more people to play with, and I'm sure they will love it, while it doesn't have to be too hard on their pockets - Ebay exists, remember, as does the swap shop on this forum, second hand miniatures are very cheap, and easy to fix up.

nareik wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
Financial embarrassment, caused by other people knowing? No. I do not hang around with the kinds of people who would care how others spend their money. None of us are rich, but we understand the need to play, create and feel human through having nice things.

Guilt in myself? That's a battle for anyone with low income. A while back I had to separate my hobby money and my rent/food/bills money.
Sell a kit: Hobby money. Stay within that budget.
Wages: Survival money. No touching. And in eight years of renting, I've been on time to the hour each month.

But sometimes I get home, realise how tired and hungry I am, look at my (second hand) 40K army and want to kick the table over. Just a little. Just some days.

Firstly, maybe you would be able to stretch your food money further if you didn't lather yourself in butter.

Second, your second hand 40k army isn't a waste of money. Think of it as frozen asset (like a house). If things ever get too bad you can sell it for around the same price as what you paid for it (seeing as it was second hand to begin with and hey, 40k hasn't been AoSed yet). If anything, looking at the typical state of second hand models being sold, you'll probably have added value to the army and make a tidy profit, even accounting for paint/hobby expenses!

Body butter come under "hobby".

Jokes aside, one half of my army is worth nothing (Mordians), which I know because I paid nothing.
The other half is irreplaceable, financially and sentimentally.

No.

 notprop wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:
...I gotta say that I genuinely don't understand hiding your financial investment in a hobby from someone who's seen you naked, though.

The last social barrier is no longer using the toilet while the wife is in the shower. It's admitting what that Forgeworld order actually cost.

First up, buying wargaming stuff isn't an investment, its the very definition of s diminishing return.

I had to tell my Mrs I had won a raffle a few years ago when I spent nearly £600 at the FW booth at Salute (on top of the normal rucksack of stuff).

She just about accepted that............The next year she found it somewhat more dubious.

I would say this is absolutely correct, but about the wrong thing (diminishing return).

Gaming ISN'T an "investment."

But it is something you do because you ENJOY it.

So, if people drink expensive whiskey or wine (which is forever gone after it is consumed), or they buy cat figurines (which aren't likely to be "valuable," but they just like cats), or if people like going out to see movies a lot (such as foreign films, art films, as well as major studio releases), or if they play golf, tennis, or rugby, then that isn't much different from a person buying things that have to do with "games" because they enjoy them.

It certainly isn't an investment (but could be, depending upon the object). But not everything in life needs be done in order to "Profit" from it monetarily.

Sometimes the "Profit" is emotional well-being.

MB

While gaming isn't an investment... It can be a self-sustaining hobby. It makes it a much different situation when you have someone who is flushing 10-20k$ a year down the plasticgods toilet, and someone who is generating income to mitigate or augment the flushing... One is a red-flag which could almost be collector hoarder territory which SHOULD be an issue, and others may not be.

Examples:
*I know fpeople who were hardcore 40k tourney-goers who would buy a brand new army, paint it up, play it then sell it for equal or more than they bought it for every 6 months. That is self-sustaining, and not a 'debt-sentence'

*I know KS gamblers who buy 2 of every pledge to have pledge 2 pay for pledge 1 so they basically get stuff for free. On the back end, if the game sucks, they unload it to minimize loss. They enjoy playing the game of economy, and have a wall of boxed games and plastic minis which they are not going broke on.

I personally painted my way through college wargaming so I could play 40k without going broke. Now I have disposable income, but even now, I sell painted models, sculpts and other stuff to cover my hobby costs so it is a minimal drain.

When people, (women who I am dating in particular) see the room, they immediately see someone who is bad with money and a financial burden. The second they realize it is not a financial burden, it becomes almost a non-issue. I have a room in my basement and it doesn't clutter the house, it doesn't break my bank, I am not neglecting my responsibilities for plastic crack. Life moves on.

We used to spend A Lot on booze like every night and then graduated from spinning money into urine to spinning money into plastic and occasionally resin. That's evolution.
...this somehow ties into the discussion above but its late and the iPad is lagging. No shame in spending money on what you like. Despite some forum and Internet rage, the hobby is supposed to be fun and bring you some inkling of joy.

 VeteranNoob wrote:
We used to spend A Lot on booze like every night and then graduated from spinning money into urine to spinning money into plastic and occasionally resin. That's evolution.
...this somehow ties into the discussion above but its late and the iPad is lagging. No shame in spending money on what you like. Despite some forum and Internet rage, the hobby is supposed to be fun and bring you some inkling of joy.

Great, now I have Chumbawumba in my head....




Actually... not a bad game for gaming.

The Auld Grump

I'm going to game for the rest of my life.

I was obsessed when I was 10 and I'm still so at 33. Don't see that changing anytime.

Nope, I care not what other people think of me !

I'm a student and I happen to be broke now and then. Warhammer does not help, but that's ok, I go without a few nicer things to have models to work on (I tend to do more scratch build terrain than models though).

I do feel bad when my friends buy me things (like beer or a nice meal) that I could have bought myself, but chose to get a kit instead. I usually ay why I'm broke so that they know though.

Beyond that, most people have a hobby/habit of their own that they spend money on, so just point that out and they leave it be. "This is what I do with the money don't spend on cigarettes" works nicely.

I'm not ashamed about buying/painting/playing Warhammer, but I don't advertise it to people I meet. My wife will bring it up at parties from time to time, and it's really fun and weird to try and explain the hobby to people. I just don't blather on and on about it, unless I'm talking to a fellow hobbyist.

One funny note, I converted a Yamaha motorcycle into an Ork warbike. Most people think it's just Mad Max, so it's usually not associated with 40k. After riding it to several bike nights however, I learned there is a quite alarming amount of cross-over between Motorcycle Clubs and wargaming!

You haven't really lived until you played a game of 40k on a pool table with beer cans and liquor bottles for terrain while 15 or so drunk bikers are giving running commentary on the match. (I of course brought my bike-heavy cult of speed, they about died to see my mini's painted the same way as my RL bike.) Being able to share that story at parties made all the years spent painting and all the money spent totally worth it.

 Rayvon wrote:
Nope, I care not what other people think of me !

I care what people think of me.

I want people to think that I am a gamer, and a fantasy nerd.

The Auld Grump - my good lady is Wiccan... and there are an enormous number of gaming witches out there, let me tell you.

Growing up I played with miniatures courtesy of my dad, during my time in school (formative and then the annoying high school) I had become a GW follower and was commonly found with a White Dwarf in hand.

People talked gak, sure, because kids are donkey-caves, but I never cared. Any significant (or in some cases, lesser) others that I've taken up with eventually find out and are either indifferent or impressed (with the patience I display in taking up such a tedious hobby).

Never be ashamed of your hobby, especially this one - remember, not only does it show that you can pay attention to detail, you're artistic, AND rich (or destitute, as this hobby tends to make one).

Never, at least when it comes to the cost. I won't bring up the price, but if it's brought up, I tell it like it is: It's about the same as most other hobbies (read: high entry, then 50-60 a month there after)

The only thing I "hide" is the fact that at it's core, warhammer is seen as "plastic army men", so I kinda down play it as plastic soldiers, but social and with painting to friends and family.

Much shame I have. Much guilt. Much doubt.

But it could be because I feel so much of it in my life in general and its just spilled on to my hobby as well.

Really it is a fight... a fething battle... to remind myself that I somehow 'enjoy' this hobby.


But you know what ... that's the hobby in general...

As far as being ashamed due to cost... well... yeah I'm ashamed... especially when I can count the numerous times I've let the hobby disrupt my finances to the point where I've been late for rent before because I've let spending get out of hand and didn't stick to my budget/plan (in fact I'm about to be late for rent for the second time in my experience of renting... so late that it may lead to a court date... and yes it is because of the poor way I handled my spending and finances recently).

I just wish my hubby was as interested in the hobby as I was. He's a gamer too, always has been, but not into the creative, modeling aspect much =/

of course I kinda half way worry if something happened he'd sell my models for what I said I paid for them

On the other hand, he always looks to see what I'm doing and appreciates what I've painted, so you know there's that. Plus I think we're both a bit long in the tooth now to worry about what others think of our hobbies as well.

Nope. I'm a large dude so I have the luxury of being able to actually be CONFRONTATIONAL in my nerdiness. I force other people to deal with it.

Me and my brother are not ashamed about cost of our hobby. We have very religious relatives which thinks about it very badly. They say that we spend our time without avail and have that ugly demonic creatures in our shelves.
We like zombies, but we think about it in some another way then that people. For more sensitive friends and parents we try to cultivate modern wars with ordinary guys.

Ashamed? Yep.

But not entirely for economical reasons, although I VERY rarely tell people how much my latest FW order cost, for example, despite my salary allowing a solid shipment every month. It's more of a social reason, since Warhammer is pretty unknown in my country, unless they have a family member that dabbles in it. Though I think that me being ashamed of it is pretty unjustified, since I've practically never heard anything engative being said about it. Heck, I work in the Air Force, and I keep a good collection of my 40k stuff in my dorm on the base, and most people that come in are just interested in what it exactly is. They're even more acceptive and genuinely interested than anyone from school that found out about it. I try to keep it lowkey though. I'd rather have people not knowing than being aware of my hobby, but that's just something I got in my head for no real reason.

I'm not ashamed of my hobby at all. If someone is the type of person who would give me gak for it then they're probably not the kind of person that I would want to associate with anyway. For me gaming is a release from the stress of college. I get home after a long day and I just look at models and occasionally build and paint some. I have no reason to hide it.

 notprop wrote:

First up, buying wargaming stuff isn't an investment, its the very definition of s diminishing return.

I had to tell my Mrs

Not necessarily. I have sold a few armies and models for more than I paid for them. I raised the money for our deposit buying badly listed models on ebay, restoring them and reselling. I've also been that guy that buys limited edition items and resold at a healthy personal profit, I funded my hobby during my teacher training thanks to the end times. I'm still sat on a few select items that I'm happily watching the value increase on. If you want to make money from the hobby, it is doable.

 JamesY wrote:

 notprop wrote:

First up, buying wargaming stuff isn't an investment, its the very definition of s diminishing return.

I had to tell my Mrs

Not necessarily. I have sold a few armies and models for more than I paid for them. I raised the money for our deposit buying badly listed models on ebay, restoring them and reselling. I've also been that guy that buys limited edition items and resold at a healthy personal profit, I funded my hobby during my teacher training thanks to the end times. I'm still sat on a few select items that I'm happily watching the value increase on. If you want to make money from the hobby, it is doable.

that's by far the exception, and not the rule. For most hobbyist, their personal use items only depreciate, especially given the massive transaction costs (shipping, eBay, and paypal's cut).

 Polonius wrote:

 JamesY wrote:

 notprop wrote:

First up, buying wargaming stuff isn't an investment, its the very definition of s diminishing return.

I had to tell my Mrs

Not necessarily. I have sold a few armies and models for more than I paid for them. I raised the money for our deposit buying badly listed models on ebay, restoring them and reselling. I've also been that guy that buys limited edition items and resold at a healthy personal profit, I funded my hobby during my teacher training thanks to the end times. I'm still sat on a few select items that I'm happily watching the value increase on. If you want to make money from the hobby, it is doable.

that's by far the exception, and not the rule. For most hobbyist, their personal use items only depreciate, especially given the massive transaction costs (shipping, eBay, and paypal's cut).

I never meant to suggest that it was the rule, I was just pointing out that it isn't 'the very definition of a diminishing return' as you can make money from it.

I used to be very ashamed to admit I was into tabletop war gaming and RPG's, but one day it occurred to me that I was utterly ok with being open about being a skydiver and BASE jumper. Gaming only ever cost me money (and only a fraction of what I've spent on jumping), and it's never sent me to the ER or put me at serious risk of death. So, I decided if I was embracing that, it was silly to not embrace the other aspects of my life. So now I work hard to be open about it and embrace my geekdom.

-MaxGravity

I'm not ashamed of it at all. I don't see it as anything to be ashamed of, in a age where people spend the same amount of money on ridiculous shoes, expensive sports and a new smartphone every 6 months.

It's a creative, tactical and fulfilling hobby that let's me forget the escapades of a world turning faster and faster, all the while I let out my inner geek. I get to create something out of grey plastic that comes to life, with nothing but my imagination to guide me.

Anyone who cannot understand such a hobby and what it gives the person in terms of fulfillment and joy it a very narrow-minded individual as I see it.

Plus is freakin' war in space. It's awesome!

 JamesY wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 JamesY wrote:

 notprop wrote:

First up, buying wargaming stuff isn't an investment, its the very definition of s diminishing return.

I had to tell my Mrs

Not necessarily. I have sold a few armies and models for more than I paid for them. I raised the money for our deposit buying badly listed models on ebay, restoring them and reselling. I've also been that guy that buys limited edition items and resold at a healthy personal profit, I funded my hobby during my teacher training thanks to the end times. I'm still sat on a few select items that I'm happily watching the value increase on. If you want to make money from the hobby, it is doable.

that's by far the exception, and not the rule. For most hobbyist, their personal use items only depreciate, especially given the massive transaction costs (shipping, eBay, and paypal's cut).

I never meant to suggest that it was the rule, I was just pointing out that it isn't 'the very definition of a diminishing return' as you can make money from it.

I still stand by it. Your examples are more about taking advantage of the foolishness of others. That and the huge amount of spare time a teacher has (the Mrs is one), but that's another story.

But as a general rule if you buy gaming products new they depreciate upon purchase. You take them off the sprue, the depreciate a bit more. Glue them together and again they devalue a little. The more effort that goes into them the more likely you are to get less back. Paint them and it's anyones guess!

 notprop wrote:

 JamesY wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 JamesY wrote:

 notprop wrote:

First up, buying wargaming stuff isn't an investment, its the very definition of s diminishing return.

I had to tell my Mrs

Not necessarily. I have sold a few armies and models for more than I paid for them. I raised the money for our deposit buying badly listed models on ebay, restoring them and reselling. I've also been that guy that buys limited edition items and resold at a healthy personal profit, I funded my hobby during my teacher training thanks to the end times. I'm still sat on a few select items that I'm happily watching the value increase on. If you want to make money from the hobby, it is doable.

that's by far the exception, and not the rule. For most hobbyist, their personal use items only depreciate, especially given the massive transaction costs (shipping, eBay, and paypal's cut).

I never meant to suggest that it was the rule, I was just pointing out that it isn't 'the very definition of a diminishing return' as you can make money from it.

I still stand by it. Your examples are more about taking advantage of the foolishness of others. That and the huge amount of spare time a teacher has (the Mrs is one), but that's another story.

But as a general rule if you buy gaming products new they depreciate upon purchase. You take them off the sprue, the depreciate a bit more. Glue them together and again they devalue a little. The more effort that goes into them the more likely you are to get less back. Paint them and it's anyones guess!

One example is, admittedly taking advantage of timings, and people missing out at the time the product went live. If you are a good painter, you can reasonably expect to sell it for at least what you paid, meaning that you have had the benefit of using it for at most the cost of the time you spent on it. With the amount of spares on modern kits, you can resell spares to reduce the upfront cost of the box. Just to be clear, I really am not saying that this is true or practiced by most hobbyists, I'm just saying that it is possible to invest in items with the intention and ability to profit from them. It does take a lot of time though. Time that I (much like your missus, I'm sure) don't want to spend on marginal gains.

I'm not ashamed of my hobby, but I am frequently ashamed that I share an association with some of my fellow hobbyists.

Nomeny wrote:
I'm not ashamed of my hobby, but I am frequently ashamed that I share an association with some of my fellow hobbyists.

Yup.

More shamed of the massive amounts of space my unplayed board games/unpainted miniatures have taken up than anything.

I don't broadcast any of my hobbies, from tournament level paintball to amateur beer sommelier. Not because of shame, but rather because none of my hobbies defines me as a person.

If folks express interest, I'll expand on my interests, but I've an awful habit of being far more interested in almost everything than most people are in almost anything.