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The original was posted on /r/tifu by /u/Face_Of_Blue on 2025-08-05 14:19:35+00:00.

Earlier this year I decided it was time for me to finally get my first tattoo, and in a bit of a rush I booked an appointment with the first tattoo artist whose work really spoke to me. Honestly I was not in a good mindset to be getting this done but that’s a different story. I saw someone say you should tell your artist if you have a budget, and in hindsight that’s probably more for if you’re penny pinching and just cannot afford too much at the time. I’m just slightly thrifty, but also new to the tattoo scene. I know now that you don’t typically offer a budget, you just ask for the quote and let them tell you. Anyway, I was getting my tattoo in a large city, saw that rates in the largest cities can go up to $350/hr, and did the math for how long I thought my design would take. So I told the artist my budget was $3,000, and they said they’d do it for $3,200. Yes, I fell for the whole “gee it’s only $200 over” bit, not the brightest crayon in the box. I realize now they saw how much I was willing to pay and ran with it. Of course they’re not going to tell me “we actually charge only half as much thanks though.” I did the math, and for the time spent I realized that I had essentially paid this man $500/hr. Yeah yeah I know, you don’t cheap out on tattoos, you pay for quality, art is subjective and as such so is its worth, I get it. But this was not a big celebrity artist, I didn’t get hyperrealism or complex stippling etc. It was black and grey linework with minimal shading, almost 3/4 sleeve on the top side of the arm only. He is relatively well-known in parts of the world, but not enough to be making $500/hr. Obviously I could afford it, and offered the price myself. But I was naively offering what I thought was typical, and I wouldn’t have offered as much if I’d known it wasn’t the normal range for something like this. Oh well. You live and you learn, I guess.

EDIT: I knew the price was pretty high going in, and I understood this was a unique artist with a large following coming to an expensive city. I started questioning whether I overpaid because when I told people the price they looked shock. You can look and judge for yourself if it seems worth the tag: Tattoo by Fredao Oliveira.

TL;DR: I told the artist my budget was $3k and he ran with it. Realized later that may not have been the typical price.