My knee-jerk reaction is to be a preservationist. But objectively..
Good guns always go up in value, but they rarely keep pace with a good stock portfolio. So when I buy a gun, my intent is to pass it along in as good a condition as I can, but in the meantime it is for my purpose & pleasure (shooting, admiring, whatever). After the purchase price, the cost I am most aware of is that of displaced funds that could have gone into a good stock (yeah, I know, I'd be golden right now if all my assets had been in fine guns a year ago). A $10,000 gun that can be expected to appreciate at 3-4% a year vs. a stock that appreciates at 8% a year is costing you $400-500 a year in "rental" fees. I guess it's the cost of having fun.
As L Brown noted, there are folks whose enjoyment is, what do you call it, keeping score with original condition. Each to his own.
In closing I will note that there are two kinds of gun modifiers that I don't understand. One is the guy who beats the crap out of his gun and then wants to refinish it so he can beat the crap out of it again. The other is the guy whose history is one of two or three new acquisitions every year, each one being the holy grail; the new purchase is then modified to make it more perfect before it is predictably discarded for the next grail. I don't get it.
