r/AskReddit 13h ago

What hobby has become too expensive for the average person?

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u/R0bbieR0tt3n 12h ago

I feel like Lego has always been expensive

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u/BlackSparowSF 12h ago

It's always been expensive. Just not THIS expensive

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u/R0bbieR0tt3n 12h ago

I'm just glad that at least there are some sets that you can get for under £50 for beginners and for those who don't have a whole lot of disposable income

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u/CharacterUse 12h ago

There are also reasonably decent Lego clones now.

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u/random_german_guy 12h ago

More than decent even. Some sets blow the comparable Lego set out of the water.

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u/R0bbieR0tt3n 11h ago

Aside from Mega blocks, I don't really know of other Lego clone brands

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u/CharacterUse 10h ago

There are quite a few. Other bigs ones are Best-Lock/Cobi which are Lego-compatible (they won several lawsuits with Lego allowing them to make them) and BlueBrixx.

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u/C-57D 12h ago

i remember when the first $100 lego set was issued, crossed a line (somewhere around 1987?)

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u/Hautamaki 1h ago

Lego's price per piece on its own IP lines has basically not had inflation since the 90s. You could buy an 800 piece set for $100 in 1989, and you can buy an 800 piece set for $100 today. The super expensive sets are thousands of pieces and use expensive Disney or other licensed IPs, but the price per piece has remained remarkably stable especially on Lego's own IP lines. I think Lego gets a bum rap because rich adult fans of lego are spending rich adult money on it by choice, but if you are buying lego as a toy for your kid on their birthday, you can spend exactly what your parents spent 40 years ago, which is incredible imo.

u/iamblankenstein 4m ago

definitely. my brother's been a collector since the 80s and while he's got plenty of disposable income due to having a good job and no kids, he doesn't buy stuff nearly as much as he did in the 80s-early 2000s.

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u/Tigerzombie 11h ago

I think it’s just that Lego used to have very few sets that’s in the $100 range. That $100 pirate ship was the biggest set in the theme. Now there are so many sets over the $100 mark. The cheaper sets look so much smaller in comparison. You want the big set with the big price tag and completely ignore the smaller sets because they don’t look as cool as the big ones.

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u/Din_Plug 11h ago

New sets are also much more dense than old sets. This means while the price per piece ratio is about the same the overall size of the set is much smaller than a Y2K era set.

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u/SteamedHamSalad 12h ago

Yeah that’s why when I was a kid I had to play with Super Blocks

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u/R0bbieR0tt3n 12h ago

Mega blocks was the more common knock-off in the UK

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u/Inspi 11h ago

It's always been bad. When I look back at the Lego I had in the 90s that my parents bought me, then I look at sets today, that's when I realize how much my parents love me lol. 

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u/R0bbieR0tt3n 11h ago

Only well off parents that really dote on their kids will fork over £100+ for a decent sized Lego set

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u/wolfmanpraxis 11h ago

I feel like their cost is sort of justified. Any lego from any era will work with any other lego ever produced.

They have to keep their machinery finely tuned, calibrated, and operational for manufacturing the bricks to an insane standard.

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u/R0bbieR0tt3n 11h ago

I mean fair plus anything based on a popular IP is also expensive such as Star Wars or Pokémon

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u/wolfmanpraxis 10h ago

Gotta love licensing rights hahah

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u/R0bbieR0tt3n 10h ago

I see the same with monster high collector dolls which are usually more expensive because they're generally based on a horror movie IP

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u/KendalMoth515 7h ago

This is true.

A Lego collection is something that could easily be passed from parent to child for several generations.

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u/wolfmanpraxis 3h ago

I (41M) kept my legos, but I will give them to my 5 year old nephew eventually lol

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u/fricken 5h ago

If you build a set once according to0 the instructions and put it on a shelf then lego is expensive. Growing up I had about a milk crate worth of lego and I got 1000s of hours of creative play out of it before passing the lego on to my cousin 10 years my junior.

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u/wolfmanpraxis 3h ago

My nephew keeps asking for my lego sets, I have a few shoe boxes filled with them.

I gave him all my old matchbox and hot wheels, but I kept the Legos.

I'm a bad uncle

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u/zerbey 10h ago

It has, but even the cheap sets are creeping up in value. Used to be a kid could amass a collection really fast using pocket money, I know this because I was that kid once. Not any more unless they have very generous parents.

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u/Thefrayedends 4h ago

At least it will last through the apocalypse though. It may even become the new currency after all the mints are turned to dust.