How much does your system retail for?

Retail: estimating $9,000
What I paid: $3,500

What is hard for me is that it's totally addicting and I just want to keep upgrading. Shoot, I usually buy something already knowing what the next upgrade will be. Since I started this craziness 8 months ago, I'm on my third amp, fifth pair of speakers, second c.d. player, fourth pair of speaker wires, third pair of interconnects in addition to a dac, and a pre amp.

I used to say video games are digital crack. I take that back now and would say video games are like digital weed and stereo equipment is more akin to digital crack. I'm looking in to an inpatient rehab, just I upgrade a few more things.

Two channel system for around $40k. This does not count music. I have somewhere around 4k to 5k albums and 3k or so CDs. Some of the albums are over 40 years old So a lot of us remember what they used to cost back in the day.
But you know what? It's worth every penny!

Six hundred thousand, keeping an honest count on mistakes made
and either sold at a loss or they still occupy a shoe-box somewhere. (Count the price of those tubes you never want to hear again).

I could build it for about $30,000 without the mistakes and divorce attorneys fees.

About 2,900 I downgraded my system by replacing a sota nova with a philips ga-212/ma-2002e and am very happy with no plans for further change. (nad 4020 tuner, arc sp9-ii, quicksilver kt88s, Vandy 2ci spkrs)... very budget, but I feel, huge 'bang for the buck'.

Exactly $ 567,045.08.....and that's just the cables.

Now talk about a bragging-rights thread. Makes me want to reconsider this hobby.