Games of State

It’s simple when you think about it. The two hobbies which I’ve talked about on here so far are both quite cheap. After all, the only investment which you definitely need to make for roleplaying is the dice – everything else required can be obtained for free (with some gamers even making a point of sticking to free games). Cooking is slightly more costly, after all, even if you have the resources of River Cottage you need some investment (or considerably more time), but overall it’s still pretty cheap given the requirement of food for sustenance.

My other hobbies are far more expensive, both in time and in money.

The first is inherently geeky, a bit strange strange and carries a less then desirable reputation: railway modelling (or “railroading” as it’s known in the States). It’s a good hobby, it indulges my interest in engineering and it’s probably the most creative thing I do. I’m not particularly good at it, and to be fair I’ve never gotten as far as something like Waverly West (a realistic recreation of parts of Edinburgh’s main station). The closest I’ve got to that is building some hills out of foamboard for a diorama – hardly making it my most active hobby.

So where does the expense come in? Well, the models themselves are expensive – top of the range British models similar to the ones in the picture generally cost between £80 and £125 if you model in OO scale. Smaller engines are cheaper, but still seldom under £40. Thankfully, these are a snip compared to the larger O scale models, which generally cost between £500 and £2,000. There are also heavy requirements on time and space – even a simple circle of track requires a lot of space, with realistic models generally occupying their own room and taking hundreds of man-hours to build. I doubt I’ll ever get to that kind of level, not least because it’s going to be years before I’m going to have that kind of space, but I still collect some models, at the rate of about one per year. Generally I only buy ones which mean something to me – in 2007, it was a model of a locomotive from Glasgow Transport Museum, this year it’s a different version of the locomotive my parents gave me when I was 6 or 7. Eventually, I might actually finish off the diorama I started so I at least have something to display them on.

The other expensive hobby is much more embryonic and considerably more expensive: collecting whisky. Being a student, I obviously don’t have much chance to collect whisky – a reasonable bottle of mass produced whisky – Jura, Laphroig, Ardberg, Talisker and so on – costs between £20 and £40 and offers no collectors value. Some collectors whiskys can be bought for as little as £30 while a number of limited editions are sold for between £40 and £100. Not a cheap business at all, not least because opened bottles lose their value.

It gets worse however. If you pay £100 for a bottle of whisky, you might consider opening it eventually. I certainly would, especially if it was something along the lines of Bruichladdich Octomore (pictured, RRP £90), the world’s most peated whisky. There is a level of collector’s whiskys where they cease to be something for human consumption and instead become an investment, alongside shares or gold. One example is MacAllen 1945. Now, MacAllen is a reasonable distillery, although not the first choice of many whisky drinkers. It was one of the first distilleries to come back into production following the Second World War, the upshot of which is the ‘45, ±250 bottles of which were made available in 2002. 50ml bottles of it now retail for £675. One dealing website offers £7,000 for a full size bottle.

On a more achievable scale, Kilchoman is a new malt from a farm distillery on Islay. Bottles of it’s first release whisky retailed for £45 (an exceptional price for a 3 year old whisky); less then a year later and it commonly changes hands for upwards of £200. It would appear that the second bottling is being traded in America for similar prices. It’s also an excellent and surprising whisky with a complex nose and peated character, guaranteeing that it’s only going to increase in value.

Whisky is a fascinating substance. I’ve been drinking whisky since I was 18, but it’s only after 6 years that I’m really beginning to appreciate the true subtleties of the drink. It takes on even more complexity when you consider that you could be drinking something which you may never be able to taste again and which is utterly unique. That’s why I’m trying to start collecting it – as an investment and as an opportunity to try unique things.

So, yes, some hobbies really are more expensive then others, but then every hobby has different rewards