After all, sometimes you'll buy a guitar then realise although you like the idea of knowing how to play, you don't much like the idea of practising. Better to figure that out with a $300 guitar than a $3000 guitar.
And hell, often cheap devices last years anyway under home use, if you know how to look after them; my $7 electric whisk and $45 electric hammer drill are still working just fine after 10 years!
(Of course, you don't want to go so cheap it becomes dangerous/difficult/underpowered and artificially makes you not use it - I've mostly had the judgement or luck to avoid that)
My gut says the depreciation between new and used + your time spent finding a buyer and selling torpedo the actual benefits.
Believe it was popularized by Adam Savage, re: tool purchases.
Essentially, current price segmentation means the optimal approach is buying cheapest (e.g. Harbor Freight), seeing how much you actually use it, then if you use it (or use it hard enough it breaks) buy something premium for your second purchase.
You'll save enough on all the things you don't really use to more than make up for replacement costs.
Source: my collection of high end crap I never use.
Of people with wrenches, how many use them on engines or high-end bicycles?
And so it's relatively easy for tool companies to convince people "You know what? You may only have thought about working on an engine a few times, and have no idea where the valve cover is, but by god you're a mechanic. Not like those weekend warrior types. You deserve the good stuff. A full set of Snap-On!"
That seems to hold for a lot of instruments—there’s a price under which the quality’s so bad it could turn off someone who might have kept playing.
* Has lifetime warranty * Should easily survive your use and be capable of being passed down to kids, etc.
Basically the selling point is: "buy this pot one time, for life".
Thank god 60s avocado green is coming back into fashion...