It sort of spins out into how you grew up and what your parents had as to what you "lust after". Ain't no Jimmy Carter's here. My parent's were both Navy and when Mom got discharged (honorably) for a pregnancy (yes they discharged all women for pregnancy in the mid 50's, married or not!) they got a RCA TV Record Player combo used. That actually lasted up until about 1963 when Dad could no longer economically fix it, so off to Sears for a "portable" record player that could be used by the two eldest of the kids(me and one sister) while mom or dad was in the room. It had to weigh 40# easily. Nobody in Navy Housing had any stereo gear to speak of other than what some of the ET's or EM's had cobbled together, and generally they were single. I do remember one married Chief (no kids) who had some serious separates. We were allowed to peek into the room and listen to it, but weren't allowed within 10ft of it. Most of it was late 50's FISHER mono gear that he cobbled into a stereo system. Custom speaker's,etc. This was about 1966. In '68 they got a Morse Electronic's console in some type of spanish provincial. UGLY AS SIN, but played loud enough for us kids who beat the dogshit out of it when mom and dad not home. It lasted up into the mid 80's. By then I had gone Navy and seduced by the stuff in the Navy Exchange, but in the states didn't get the same breaks as the guys who hit the NAVEX in Yokusuka or Saigon, or Guam. As I liked listening to FM STEREO at the time, and had a pair of KOSS PRO4A's i bought in high school I got a PIONEER SX-434. Jump ahead to 1982, got married and started raising 2 sons. The PIoneer was stored and we had table radio's. So about 1995 I broke out the PIONEER and found my Marantz 4G speakers had basically self destructed in the Md. Humidity and heat (they were in the attic). So off to Ratshack for some Minimus 7's. I started getting a hankering for a console about 2008 and started looking around on the net, and found a FISHER Custom Electra VIII (1965 model with Hybrid amp), in a Western DC Suburb. Original Family and it had been cared for and was still working. $65.00 later I had my 1st Fisher. Gave it to the wife just to shut her up. Then another 65', this time a Futura shows up and traded a Hallicrafters S-85 for it. There are now 8 or 9 Fisher consoles (depending on whether you count the 510/610 consolette and the 560 companion as one or two consoles) in a 1100sqft house. Overall total is 14. 6 of the 8(or9) are up stairs. The two downstairs are parts carcasses.
I'm not a big fan of separates, and like receivers more. None of the FISHER's I have rate more than 35-50wpc rms, nor do any of my PIONEER's, or Sansui's except my SX-939. I DO like separate tuners and will hook them into the receivers AUX port just to hear the difference between tuners.
So mainly I'm a console guys with receivers as backup's.