The beginner must learn what tools can do in their craft.

The beginner must learn how cheap is too cheap; the beginner must learn where the sweet spot between "affordable" and "breaks halfway through your first project" is.

The beginner must dabble with a few specialized tools. Some of these can be expensive, because the market is small - there are simply not many people who need this tool. The beginner must learn something of which tools truly can transform the way you work and help you focus on the joyous parts of the craft.

The beginner must also spend a ton of time mastering their craft. Spending half a month's rent on a Serious Tool gives it more power; it sits there in the corner, gathering dust, quietly murmuring about how much you paid for it and how little you've spent trying to learn how to use it.

The master has accumulated quite the toolset over the journey from beginner to master. The master has a couple of those half-a-month's rent tools. Maybe they use them regularly. Maybe they get the bulk of their work done with the cheaper stuff. But the master has had multiple occasions to celebrate some milestone in their craft by buying a cool, rare tool. The master may have had the occasional gig that paid a whole year's rent and gone out and bought a coveted tool that cost an appreciable fraction of that payday. The master is at the point where they need some of those more specialized tools. The master may even be at the point where they are making so much money with their work that they can pay a specialist to hand-craft a tool to their precise specifications, and make it a beautiful symbol of their dedication to their craft. Or make their own, depending on how their craft overlaps with what's required to make their tools.

The master may also have a few battered, well-loved tools that they got long ago, and still use. It still works fine, they've tried expensive replacements and haven't found any real difference, why bother?

And somewhere between the beginner and the master is the journeyperson. They make their living with their tools. They just had that whole year's rent gig happen and they just splurged on that pricey, rare tool. And now they have a powerful signifier; when they take out that expensive tool, people who know a little about the craft will ooh and ahh, and revise their expectations of the journeyperson's performance upward. And perhaps revise their willingness to pay for it, as well.

The master and the journeyperson both know that much of the magic is in them, not in their tools. They can do far more with a cheap, shitty, basic tool than a beginner would. But they also know when they need to take out the really specialized tools. And they do this work enough that they have invested in solid tools that sit nicely in their hands, and are balanced so as to leap eagerly to the task at hand. They have Opinions about their tools and they are happy to share them.

And then there is the dilettante. The dilettante has a job that means a lot of those Serious Tools are in the range of an impulse purchase, rather than a half a month's rent. But because it was not bought as a sacrifice of something else, its quiet murmurs about how you never play with it have far less power. Perhaps eventually the dilettante will have accumulated enough Serious Tools that their combined murmurs about how much they cost will motivate the dilettante to blow the dust off of them and start playing. Perhaps not. There are many other things to spend one's precious time upon.

The beginner and the master and the journeyperson are all thankful to the dilettantes of the world, for the dilettantes help bring down the price of the Serious Tools, both by buying new ones, and by letting their dusty, untouched Serious Tools go for a fraction of their price when they clear out their garage.