At the beginning of last year a friend of mine pushed me into starting fencing. He, his father and his sister fenced (in fact, his sister got recruited for fencing last year), really often, so I just went with them when they went to the fencing club. I initially fenced foil, where you have to poke people and didn't find it very much fun. Sabre you can score by hitting any part of your opponent from the waist up with any part of your blade.
How expensive it is varies on which weapon you fence, but unfortunately yeah, kind of. Membership at a club tends to be about 500 dollars a year, or 10 dollars every time you come to fence. You also need to buy equipment, which can range (depending on weapon, quality and exactly what you're getting (for instance, you don't NEED fencing shoes, but they're nice to have), from about 250 dollars for a simple set of epee equipment to about 600 for a bare-bones set of sabre equipment.
The problem is, in two of the weapons you need a conductive jacket/vest and in one you need a conductive mask. These things, unless you buy a really fancy one, will oxidize so much they no longer work in a year. So they need to be replaced. And sometimes blades break, and they need to be replaced. I'm not sure how this stacks up against other sports for cost, but I suspect it's a bit more. Still, I think it's worth it.
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