Piracy

I've been looking into this recently, it's possible for both base and pro models if they're under firmware version 9.0, anything above that is not yet exploitable, plus it's a softmod so it's a straightforward process, although it's not persistent across reboots so it's most convenient to leave it in sleep mode rather than power off. I think psx-place is one of the big forums for these things, but all the information is pretty readily available around the place. Good luck with it!

Edit: Turns out a kernel exploit for firmware up to and including 11.00 was released on April 30th, however no one has yet made a jailbreak for it. So while it will be jailbroken soon, currently only up to 9.00 is supported.

If you'd like to for fun, but I've been using RPCS3 to emulate it. Ofc it's not the same as the console (i.e. you don't have to navigate the internal menu) but the games still play the same. This amazing archive has every PS3 game in the universe, all for free.

IMO the largest obstacles won't be the console, but the discs and controllers. I haven't checked recently, but I doubt these will be decreasing in price with time.

From what I see PS4 with firmware 11.00 and under can be JB

You might want to give PS4 emulation on PC a try. I was shocked at how smooth and playable it was, let alone convenient and free. That being said, modding a PS4 seems possible, though I've never done it myself. I modded my PS2 and enjoyed a lot of downloaded games that way.