Rent until you know what you want to buy. Done
On normal bindings the toe is often screwed in at one location to fit your boots and cannot be shifted later.
You can avoid the depreciation issue with old skis, but that comes with other problems.
I was also delighted when I realized that instead of going through the hassle and cost of moving everything across the country, I could just sell it and buy roughly the same thing in the new place... again for net zero dollars! Teleportation!
I have bought pretty much all my tools used. I usually buy low-tech solutions so my biggest concern most of the time is that the carbon brushes need to be replaced (and some models make this simple operation practically impossible, while in some models it takes under a minute). And I always look for dirty things that need a lot of cleaning since they usually go for cheap, and I'm cheap.
I try to buy higher quality things, used if possible, and sell when I’m done with them. But this is primarily for ecological reasons. The complete cycle can be pretty annoying/time-consuming to the point that it’s probably economically a small loss.
Buy-side can take a lot of trawling FB/Craigslist to find an item that hasn’t been thrashed. Plus coordinating pickup time/location. This usually requires driving somewhere I wasn’t planning on going.
Sell-side you have to deal with all the flakes and ghosts, not to mention the people who will show up hours late. Giving away the thing instead seems to counterintuitively make the flake problem even worse.
For hobbies, they say "buy once, cry once", but there are so many ways to be unhappy! I won't limit myself! I say buy all, cry all, and learn all the different ways to cry. I don't ski, but for the analogy, I'd try short ones, long ones, cross country ones, racing ones, red ones, blue ones, etc and then only buy really nice ones once I understand exactly what the nice ones do that the others don't. There's a good chance that I'll learn I like skis more than I like skiing, and that's okay.