I agree with your friend. Personally? My hobby is not more difficult, it is over.
Some of the hobbies I partook in as a teen looked ridiculously out of reach, I held on by the skin of my teeth. Let’s say a particular object from that hobby was $2000. At the same time, a Pokemon item was $150.
Now that object is maybe $2100 if you can find one, the Pokemon item is $25000. It’s not a matter of bigger stakes or difficulty, my branch of the hobby literally jumped from lower/mid middle class to golf resorts and beluga in the span of one measly decade. Even if I earned as much as every family member put together I couldn’t collect a fraction of what I did.
Adapting? Am I supposed to feign excitement at stuff I don’t care about, like some disgraced oil sheik collecting Bugattis and Koenigseggs being told to enjoy his new CIA-provided 03 Corolla?
No, there is no “adapting” to that, except become rich or dial back the passion to avoid leaving it all together, bitterly. Since the first is not an option, I chose the latter. Which is why I consider myself much more of a casual collector now, because I am not really a collector anymore but a man with a collection.