Is our hobby really THAT expensive? Before you spend that BIG tax refund on something to do, take a look at how our Hobby seems to stack up to others.
Over at The Plastic Crack Blog, we discuss ways of how to make your hobby cheaper and save you money. It will come as no surprise that our hobby can be quite pricey, without exaggeration I honestly feel that in the last 12 years I have been gaming I have easily spent over $1500 a year on the hobby.
This ranges from the miniatures themselves, to tools to events. It all adds up and quite often we hear family members or our partner moaning at just how much those little toys costs. But its plastic crack and this addiction is what drives us to stay up until 2am building lists or staring at the latest releases in awe and counting down the days till pay day.
Yet is it all worth it? Is all the money you spend on your hobby good value for money?
No doubt there are going to be differences amongst us as ‘value’ is often subjective in nature but what if we were to work it out and do just that, let’s look at the value of our hobby.
So let’s keep it simple. If you were to start the hobby you would probably be looking at spending about $446. This would give you a semi decent sized non-competitive army of a Space Marine Commander, 5 terminators, 3x 10 man tactical marine squads and a landraider. Alongside this it would give you all the paints you would need and the hobby tools to build and paint such an army as well as the army book and rulebook to play.
Now already we can save 20% off the RRP by going to an independent retailer, meaning to get into the hobby we would be spending $301. Sounds like quite a whack to the wallet doesn’t it?
Now how much value is that? Well let’s have a look at it in terms of cost per hour. Naturally these will vary from player to player but I am going estimate these off an hour for build time per unit, 8 hours of painting per 5 miniatures and then we will talk about gaming time.
So before this army hits the table you’d be looking at spending 78 hours at your hobby desk having these guys walk out of the armoury. Then when you start to play if you’re lucky and can get a 3 hour game in fortnightly. So in a year you have spent a further 78 hours at the gaming table.
Now let’s look at the cost breakdown of this compared to other hobbies
|
Hobby |
Cost | Hours in a year | Cost per hour |
|
Warhammer 40,000 |
$356.80 |
152 |
$2.34 |
|
Four hours at the bar each week |
$1123 |
208 |
$4.32 |
|
Skiing (gear only, does not include travel or lift passes) |
$579 |
112 (2 weeks away, skiing 8 hours a day) |
$5.16 |
| Video Game campaign with no replayability | $59 | 9 |
$6.5 |
Granted there are exceptions to these examples, you will always get some fanatic who plays a video 14 hours a day every day for a year and spends less than a cent on his hourly entertainment but for the general population that is not the case. But as you can see in relation to most hobbies ours works out quite cheap as long as you’re actually using your armies and even if you aren’t this simple equation isn’t taking into account the time spent building lists, reading your army books, interacting with the community online or watching tutorials, which inevitably add up.
So seeing this what do you think? Is $2.34 worth the hour spent on your hobby in comparison to other hobbies?
Do you think you put more hours than this?
Comment below and share to compare with your gaming buddies and head over to www.ThePlasticCrackBlog.com for tips on how to save money in your hobby.
About the Author: Greg Warwick
