Lion-O
Funny you should ask, I just joined the "league of many deck owners"The Hanged Man said:So what kind of collector are you? Do you collect hundreds of Tarot's to keep pristine, do you only buy Tarot's to use, or are you a bit of both.
I had several motivations. At first I started out with a 'Mage' deck which is described as a game deck. After getting more experienced with it I now don't believe this description at all, for me the Mage deck simply offers a very direct and modern translation of the Tarot, but I still kept playing with the "not a real deck". And so I got a Rider-Waite deck, now things were "official".
The deck works quite well for me, so far the only spreads I've done with it are the Celtic Cross (my all time favorite) and sporadicly a daily spread. Since I don't believe in too much "rules" I sometimes even did a reading in my own fashion. For example; a question like "What will be the day influence, how will this affect my surroundings and what could be the overal outcome?" after which I drew 3 cards, one for each "impression of the day".
Now, buying a few books introduced more spreads to me. I am willing to try them but don't feel that I should use the Rider deck. And there you have it... I skimmed the "most popular" list of decks and carefully looked at the pictures. And then I went "Whoah" when carefully looking at the Druidcraft & Gilded decks. And so I bought these, with the sole purpose to use the Gilded for several other spreads and well... The Druidcraft is leaving such an impression on me right now that I'll probably take a lot of time on it before using it. The book described some very interesting (and time consuming) spreads so that will probably go into wild and different directions.
Unfortunatly this isn't over ;-) While the main motivation now is "to use new spreads" my quest introduced me to some other decks which immediatly left an impression. Being new to using cards with much more detail I can now relate more to the importance and how a certain theme can also affect this procedure. And so, having played many D&D roleplaying games, I am now seriously looking at the 'Celtic Dragon' tarot. Not liking the regular 'Dragon' Tarot this one calls out to me... And finally, for now anyway, being a fan of Japanese animation (Anime) (in all honosty; I'm a fan of animation in an overall sense) the 'Manga' Tarot (the deck of the week on Aecletic not too long ago) also looks appealing to me.
While this does give a sense of "collecting" I also believe that different decks can give you different impressions and ideas about Tarot as a whole. So while collecting has a little bit to do with it, my main motivation would still be "To learn more about Tarot". I don't see myself owning 20+ decks, but if this keeps up I wouldn't be surprised if I eventually owned 20+ books regarding Tarot.