After the couple of posts on used planes and whether to get or not I thought I'd post what I've picked up from Nic Obie who's on this forum.
While not $300 uber high end planes they are working well for me, for much less than the cost of LN or any of the high endplanes I have 5 planes now that work very well...well, two I haven't had time to play with, but the three others have done excatly what Nic said they'd do.
The big point here is I think you can get into hand planes with out spending major amounts of money, this of course doesn't make any difference to those who can write the check and don't worry about a depleteing balance, but to those of us who don't have that kind of disposable income it is imho a great way to get into planes.
They are a great way to learn how to take apart, modify, sharpen and learn what to and not to use them on.
I doubt I could buy one high end plane for what I paid for these, or it'd be close, for me it works out well as I would not have bought 5 upper end planes and whould have missed out on the fun of working with a tool with out plugging it in.
Anyway here's a couple of pictures of them and the Ridgid sander stand I keep them in, for now.
The 3/4" plane has a nick out of the handle, Nic had told me about it and advised it wouldn't hurt planing, just its value.
Anyway, not to start a debate on good versus great planes, just to say with a bit of searching you can find decent planes to learn on and that will work for you.
Al