Current gaming setup I purchased last year was about £3,100.
PC - £1,380.00
RTX 5080 - £1,041.48
4k 240hz monitor- £763.97

Prior to that, my previous setup from 2015 was my most expensive purchase.
PC with GTX 980Ti - £1,314.00
4k 60hz monitor - £378.99

Everything was so much cheaper 10 years ago....

A decade ago my Uncharted 4 PS4. It was somewhat more expensive than the base 1TB unit. But not by much. Yeah, I never spent a lot for gaming hardware. I also bought a pretty good gaming laptop before the pandemic costing peanuts (by today's standards) but It was bought mostly as a do everything laptop, not primarily as a gaming one.

But no matter what I am going to buy in the future, it will certainly surpass those prices, seeing how insane the market is.

My current gaming PC.
€2700 when I built it in late 2020... (€3300 if we include the PCVR headset i bought at the same time).
Totally worth it!

Second place: €1500 for the GPU upgrade from RTX 3070 to RTX 4090 in 2023.
Also totally worth it!

My most expensive games:

• €78 (in 2026) for Forza Horizon 6 Premium Edition (including the DLC expansions)
• €65 (in 2011) for Uncharted 3 (including a PS3 bluetooth headset)
• €60 (in 2007) for the "BioShock 1 Collector's Edition" (including a sturdy Big Daddy statue)
• €60 (in 2016) for the "Mirror's Edge Catalyst Collector's Edition" (including a nice statue of Faith)

All other games were below €60... so far.

But inflation-adjusted a lot of my €50 games of the 1990s and 2000s were probably more expensive than FH6 Premium.

My most expensive new purchase is the Rog Xbox Ally at $600, second is a tie between PS5 Disc, Xbox Series X and Switch 2 Mario Kart Bundle all at $500. If you wanna include building a PC then $1000 for 512 GB SSD, Ryzen 3600, EVGA 2070 S, 32 GB DDR4 RAM, Power supply (forgot what it was), medium sized case and 2TB Hard Drive.

My most expensive preowned item I ever bought was the Majora's Mask New 3DS XL (CIB Mint) for $500.

My PC and my laptop.

Same. I bought it August, last year, for $640. Still haven't played it, though

PS5 Pro. Paid $700, plus another $80 for the disc drive. Also, I did trade in my old PS5 towards it to shave off a good chunk of that $700 (can't remember how much, and I've have to find the receipt, which should still be in the box, which is somewhere in the garage). Games definitely perform better than they did on the base model, so I'd say it was worth it. Also, I was able to get it through Best Buy who was running a 24-month zero-interest plan. Almost got it paid off, so I got to spread the cost over a long period of time without paying any interest.

Panel quality is often overlooked.  I agree with your take completely.  I thought my base ps4 looked better on an OLED than my ps4 pro looked on a LCD.  I swear by OLED (and sonos surround).  

For me it was a pre-owned 30th Anniversary Edition PS5 Pro,

I managed to get a very good condition one (looked new) for £999 with just a 30th anniversary controller, no pro controller or box but was amazed that I managed to get one so had to go for it