Terra, I can totally see your circumstance that it has made the most sense for you. I know for me, I separate my scopes into different categories and I don't mind having functional show pieces that never see light (i.e. my 5" Mogey that has a fairly poor lens). And I rarely break out my many 60mm scopes because I have so many larger scopes that function better, but I love having them and setting them up every so often just to admire them. But I also have plenty of room, and the financial burden of so much equity in astronomy gear isn't consequential to our household finances.
Again, I want to make clear that my comments are purely subjective and apply only to me. I will state tho, that I have heard other before, make similar statements in this forum. I also again want to say that I judge no one. Everyone is different, and clearly there are two different kinds of folks who frequent this forum, those who count themselves primarily as observers, and those who are clearly collectors. There are also those who fall somewhere in the middle. I used to count myself in the middle, and now I identify primarily as an observer. There’s nothing wrong with that or anyone else’s preferences for that matter, as long as you say, it remains a healthy and positive experience. Speaking again from my own experience, I’ve had fifty or sixty telescopes in my lifetime, and never no more thirty. Even when I had that many, I wasn’t falling over them, they weren’t stacked in piles, and I wasn’t walking through narrow corridors of telescopes. However, it got to feel encumbering, it was burdensome to me. So I started cutting back, and I found that it made me feel better than when I was in the accumulating stage. I now feel like I’m down to a bare minimum that makes me comfortable and gives me options when deciding what I want to observe and how I want to observe it. As far as money wrapped up in telescopes, it’s never been a financial burden for me, but it is nice to free up funds for things I would rather have or do.
