Ok, after reading most of the posts, these are my thoughts.........
Buy or rent, it's up to you, if you do lots of dives a year, buy would be the smart way to go, if you do vacation dives, then rent, compare the costs.
I forget who mentioned something about doing whatever number dives a year for 30 years, refering to OP, I only have logged about 200 dives since 1970, but I didn't dive for about 20 years diving for 7 years, never logged a single dive in those beginning years, hell, I never heard of a log book back then. When I started to dive again I was told to log dives because I would have to prove my experience when traveling to the Carib or anywhere else for dive trips. I now only log 20/20 dives or better, just because i'm a procrastinator at heart.
If someone buys gear online or EBay, then they are more than welcome to bring it into our shop for the inital checkout or annual, yes you will be charged the regular rate, we won't over charge to punnish you for not buying from us. It's called building customer loyalty, even if it's after the fact.
I have also learned the hard way, bought lots of stuiff till I finally got what I really like. I learned a lot by reading scubaboard, i've been a lurker for over a year. I now dive a bp and wing, and also love my drysuit I bought on EBay.
Thanks Scubaboard.com and all the people that gave me the info I needed.
Dan