All of us have our favourite pastimes and leisure activities that we choose to do when work, family and all other engagements allow. Hobbies let us indulge in our real passions and switch off from the responsibilities and stress that daily lives can often bring. The wartime leader and politician, Winston Churchill was famous for always making time for his hobbies, often building walls and bricklaying, and even learning to be an adept landscape artist despite a hectic schedule. He remarked that “To be really happy and safe, one ought to have at least two or three hobbies, and they must all be real”
What Are The Most Expensive Hobbies?
Choosing a hobby may seem simple enough for the vast majority of people. If it looks like the type of thing you enjoy, you have room in your schedule to pursue it and have the resources required to fund it then you are already halfway there. But what if all those restrictions were removed entirely? With no limits on time that you could dedicate to it and almost all the money in the world to support it, then would your choice be any different? For extremely high net worth individuals there is an elite list of hobbies that have astronomical prices attached to them as barriers to entry. Let’s take a look through them now as we explore the most expensive hobbies in the world.
Art Collections
There is something extremely human about amassing and displaying a collection of connected items. It speaks to the curator in all of us as we attempt to build an experience around objects that we enjoy and attempt to share with others. When those objects and items hold elevated value then they also act as a strong symbol of status and wealth. Art collections are a great example, with people searching for, and purchasing, prized paintings, and sought-after sculptures for thousands of years. Two of the world’s most expensive paintings are currently in the hands of private collectors.
Leonardo DaVinci’s Salvator Mundi was lost for two centuries before reappearing and eventually finding its way into the hands of Badr bin Abdullah Al Saud for a staggering $450.3 Million at a New York Auction. Interchange by the American abstract expressionist, Willem De Kooning, had a similarly interesting journey in 2015 with an eventual eye-watering sale from the Record Label giant David Geffen to the Banking titan Kenneth C. Griffin for £300 Million.
Rare Whiskey Collecting
The pursuit and collection of rare and limited whiskey has enjoyed a huge rise in recent years. It now represents an interesting and viable alternative to traditional art and paintings for investment amongst the world’s most wealthy. The reasons for this make sense from a simple understanding of supply and demand too. As certain casks, bottles, vintage years, and distilleries gain more and more status and prominence, every drop that is consumed from them raises the price of the stock that is left. Furthermore, when bottles or collections are found in the famous ghost distilleries that are no longer in operation, they immediately appear in the market at astonishing prices.
Mr Richard Gooding knows a thing or two about this hobby. The majority of The Perfect Collection amassed by Mr Gooding was sold across two auctions in 2020 and 2021, when it became immortalised as the second most valuable whisky collection ever sold for $9,100,000. In 2023, his Macallan 1926 Adami was also sold at Sotheby's for £2.2m, making it the most valuable bottle ever sold. Mr Gooding had dedicated over 20 years of his life to achieving this exquisite assortment of delicious drams.
Space Tourism & Travel
If there are no longer any activities on Earth that inspire excitement and intrigue, then it may be time to try an out-of-this-world experience. Having a very healthy bank balance definitely helps people boldly go where most men and women haven’t gone before for space tourism and travel. Private companies are now integrating themselves with Space Agencies to offer pioneering packages with Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos all creating their versions of the ultimate space trip. SpaceX & Nasa are leading the way with the International Space Station being readied for civilian occupants.
A return trip is expected to cost around $60 Million plus a $35,000 per night price tag for a room with a genuinely unique view. Deposits have already been taken for Virgin Galactic’s 90-minute trip to the Karman line that marks the border between Earth’s atmosphere and space. $250,000 will get you a seat alongside Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio for this stellar journey.
Super Yachting
Travelling can easily become a very expensive hobby with trips around the globe requiring lots of planning and associated costs mounting up with every mile. However, your choice on the mode of transport to take has a huge influence on exactly how much those costs will be. For the super-rich, the answer surely has to be a super yacht. Super yachting is a lifestyle hobby that allows you and your family to sail around the world in the ultimate luxury surroundings with a home on the water. Onboard these marvellous machines you are likely to find swimming pools, helicopters, fully operational bars, and five-star dining all working to your own schedule.
The average price to buy one is around $275 Million with the most expensive ever recorded being The History Supreme, a 100ft vessel covered in 10,00kg of solid gold and valued at a staggering $4.8 Billion. There are staff costs to consider too that run from anything around $200,000 to a cool $1.5 Million a month.
With unlimited funds comes the opportunity to have unlimited ideas, collections, and pastimes. It would appear that imagination is the only barrier to how the wealthiest wish to spend their time and money on some incredibly exciting and rare pursuits. With so much dedication and effort needed, it is clear that these high-class hobbies can very quickly become all-encompassing for the enthusiasts who pursue them.
If you reach the level of wealth required to do the same, it may be that your life’s work ends up not being work at all.
