Thousands, over the years. I had a real top setup going, only to get maliciously prosecuted for something that never should have gone to court, let alone a conviction/jail (not drug related), lost several grand worth each of reagents and glass, and had to build everything back up from scratch.
Can't really explain why I got into it, other than..well I think it might be in my genes, took up mycology at about age 4-5, followed it up with developing a huge interest in botany and chemistry/molecular biology. I've always lived and breathed science, be it chem, biology, mycology, botany, archaeology, astrophysics..one day, when I can save enough money, I want to try building myself a cyclotron. Main thing I need for it is to find a good turbopump on ebay for a sum I can afford to pay, just occasionally, onece in a while a turbomolecular pump comes up on the ebay results for a few hundred quid, rather than a few thousand.
I'm willing to lay down a few hundred, for a proper good pump, already got a decent vac pump for my regular work, that I could use as a roughing pump for it, maybe use something like a sliver of palladium or platinum as a valve to introduce H, deuterium or tritium via absorption/desorption so as to maintain low, low pressure whilst introducing gas to be ionized and produce the proton/deuteron/triton beam (I'm after building a proton accelerator rather than an electron one at first, although it would be neat to have both to hand, or try to build it so as to be able to use both proton and electron/positron beams. Whilst I imagine there is likely little brand-spanking-new ground that I could cover at the energy input levels available to me, as of course, I'm going to be restricted to what i can take from the house mains supply, or a whole bunch of generators in parallel. Probably little to discover that hasn't already been, but nevertheless plenty interesting things to do with it.
I've always learned better by getting my hands dirty and actually doing things, rather than reading textbooks and the like, although I do that anyway.
I have to admit, if I see something on ebay or elsewhere i like, in the way of glassware, or reagents, I'll often blow a fair bit of cash on it. I'd absolutely hate to be cut off from being able to explore the world I live in the way I do, its actually painful, in a psyche sense, like not being alive. Can't really explain that any better.