But that's a rant for another person in another thread....

Heh, I see. Still, that's a lot better than most folks could manage on a personal budget; I'd wager it was every penny of $10k, and probably closer to twice that. If it was Celestron, they don't make a 12" SCT (though they do make an 11" ) and I can't even find the tube online for <$5k (marked down from >$8k in one case. ) Obviously adding mounts, tripods, motors and computer databases will push that substantially higher even before we start talking quality eyepieces and filters.

I think you're generally correct; typically when you get to that scale and degree of interest it makes a lot of sense to sell your old one when you buy a new one because it takes a lot off the new ones pricetag, and you're not going to use your 9.5" SCT much once you unpack that 14" (this is one of the reasons I advise people to find out as much as they can about what they want BEFORE purchase, and then get precisely that or as close as they can afford so they don't buy a dozen telescopes over 20 years. ) Personally, I'm not sold on the 9.5" because it seems like a poor compromise for people who want >8" but can't quite get high enough for an 11". It's another example of what I said above: Don't upgrade one step at a time, go in leaps, because otherwise you end up paying a lot more money for marginal performance increases. My 4.5" reflector is a great scope and I love it, but if/when I buy the next one it'll be the 8" SCT, which is a whole other animal.

The main thing that makes me leery of buying an SCT on EBay is I have little more security than the sellers feedback history and (possibly) shipping insurance, and I remember the hell my mom went through with an insured candy dish that was about $20 and arrived broken. I don't want to play that game with $500 or more. Anyone going that route, however, should read the description carefully; sometimes it's a scope with motor, tripod and maybe even a computer. Others it's just a tube and you'll have to buy a mount, tripod and motor, and you may end up spending as much that way as you would buying it new, with less warranty and possibly a discontinued unsupported scope (I'd love to get the old C-8, but they were discontinuing it 15 years ago to make way for Nexstars, and now it's only available used. )

Brass is useless ornamentation, IMHO, but all I've heard is that wood>metal for tripods because it handles changing weather conditions better, doesn't expand and contract with temperature and humidity to as great a degree.

That may be the best description I've ever heard. Not everyone is great with precision engineering though; I fantasize about one of the huge truss reflectors you see in science mags, but it would be very easy to screw up assembly, and while $2000-$3000 is a steal for 2-3' of aperture, it's still a lot of money to leave on the curb for pickup.

Yeah, if you've got a laptop it's totally doable (I don't, because I still feel I can get more computer for the money with a desktop, plus I hear laptops don't really have modular design, so you "upgrade" with a new one. )

I hear ya, man, believe me. We've still got multiple disk cases filled with 5.25" disks with everything from DOS 2.10 (my original OS) to Wordstar 3.0 to a copy of Norton Utilities that was so hard to find my parents had to go to their CS instructors house for it.

And, yes, I firmly believe the top telescope brands are tops for a reason. I much prefer Celestrons SCOPES; they're a little more expensive than Meade, but they also developed the process of mass producing Schmidt corrector plates that made them commercially viable. Meade basically "flattered" Celestron when they began using the same process, but while they are slightly less expensive I think Celestron still makes the better quality scopes. I generally prefer Meades eyepieces though; I don't know why, but they seem to be sturdier and perform better. IMHO, it's a big step down in quality to Orion, and I don't seriously consider anything less. Bushnell makes DECENT spotting scopes if you're on a budget, but anything more from them is throwing away money, IMHO.