I'm not sure where folks got the idea that I'm buying a $300 titanium knife. I actually listed the exact model of dive knife I purchased in the gear list (Fox Tecnoreef.) The knife I purchased was $139, and it's made from steel (I would never buy a titanium knife. Titanium is a crappy material for knife blades.)
Lots of folks have chimed in on this thread with advice on how to save money when buying scuba gear in spite of the fact that at no point did I ever ask for advice.
Maybe there's enough opinions that someone should start a thread on that subject. Then people who are looking for the absolute cheapest possible dive gear options can get pointers on how to buy cheap gear at bargain prices. The advice regarding how to tell if the used regulator you bought on eBay is actually safe to dive with will be super popular, I'm certain.
There is sure a lot of angst on this thread regarding how other people choose to spend their money. If I don't care that I'm spending too much money on an Atomic regulator when I could have purchased something else for less money, why should anyone else get so worked up about it? As I pointed out before, I never once asked for advice on how to purchase scuba gear at the lowest possible price. In this thread, I never asked for any advice at all, for that matter. If I had said that I have decided to jump right into solo cave diving, I can understand why people might get excited and proffer a lot of unsolicited advice. All the concern over how much money I could have saved is misplaced, however.
As for the whole "you need to rent gear first" thing: There seem to be a lot of folks who believe in some unwritten scuba law that beginning scuba divers should be required to put up with rental gear for some unspecified amount of time before they should be allowed to buy their own gear.
I'd just as soon skip the crappy rental gear apprenticeship. I'd rather not struggle with an ill-fitting wetsuit that a hundred people have pissed in. I'd rather not try to figure out how to use a rental dive computer for the first time while I'm on a dive. I'd rather not have hoses on my regulator kit that "are only leaking a little bit, so it's ok." I'd rather have my gauges in familiar places, my hoses all the right length. I'd rather dive in a BCD that fits me well, that doesn't have velcro closures that don't stick to anything any more, and that I am comfortable with. I'd rather be able to know approximately how much weight I'm going to need and where it should be located, and not have to figure out my weight and trim from the beginning every time I dive with someone else's rental gear. I'd rather know the history and service condition of things that I'm using.
If you rented gear for a long time before you decided to get your own, that's fine. Whatever worked for you is great. I'm sure that because you followed this path you never ever bought anything that turned out to be unsuitable.
So many folks are certain that a new scuba diver is going to buy all the "wrong" stuff. The fact is that most of the gear out there is pretty similar. If you buy a (new) regulator from a reputable company, it's going to perform well for just about any recreational diving situation. The same with most other equipment, provided that it actually fits your body. The BCDs seem to be the most different, but even between back inflate and traditional vest designs, they perform the same functions. The differences are at the margins.
At this point, I've spent enough time in the water with my new gear that I am pretty sure that I'm going to be happy with just about all of it. I've been playing with my hose and regulator configurations to see which configuration I like the best, so I have wasted some money on flex hoses. Hoses aren't that expensive. I also bought a gauge console set for my wife, and I assumed that I could remove the computer so she could use it wrist mounted if she wanted to. Turns out the computer "puck" is not removeable. That was a $60 mistake. (I know. HUGE newbie mistake. I could have bought an entire used scuba kit on eBay for the $60 I wasted on that console.)