Honing my own straight, and seeing and feeling the joy and sense of accomplishment of doing what our forefathers did, instead of paying higher and higher prices for cartridges.
Feather blades. I had been using Shark Saloon half blades (I'm only recently getting into DE's, and I still prefer shavettes), and I thought that was the best it could get. Then I won a tuck of Feathers in a PIF. Holy smokes, they cut through my beard like a laser beam through warm butter. Now my go-to blades. Just ordered a lot of 50 on Amazon.
My first Simpson - a Somerset Chubby 3 Super two-band. When I bought it, I didn't even know what 2-band hair was (I had only ever seen three-band), but when it showed up, I said, "Oh...now this is something special." It's a beast of a brush that I barely use any more, but I'll never unload it. It's too special to me. Ironically, I later acquired a CH3 Manchurian (also Somerset) that I didn't like nearly as well, and later sold.
L - R: Simpson (Somerset) CH3 Super two-band, Simpson (Somerset) CH3 Manchurian
I had a short wait for my DE89, but I had my Tweezerman badger brush and Proraso green soap. Used all my traditional wetshaving products with a Mach 3 and had my best shave ever up to that point. From that point I knew that I was going to be happy with shaving.