You might find @pennstac’s excellent advice here worth reading. It has helped me clarify a few things, especially for figuring out if I want to put together an ideal system or experiment with different gear. I’m hoping to find a compromise between these two positions.
Here’s my cunning plan: to invest a certain amount in used gear and then cycle through it, buying and selling items as I want to try out new things. I think of it as a rainy day slush fund, one for mowing that greener grass.
I’m right there with you. I’d love to buy a pair of Vérité. Since my current headphones were purchased used or b-stock - Clear, HD 800 SDR, and LCD2-Classic (except my HD 6XX) - the Vérité would amount to a larger investment than all of them combined. Honestly, that makes me nervous.
@bpcarb had a great piece of advice: to buy an Aeolus or Eikon en route to the Vérité. I’d not lose out much on the resale and I’d get to have a lovely headphone to keep me happy until I could reach for the Vérité. (Please, for the love of god, Zach, please keep making the Vérité for another couple of years!)
A big boy amp will have to wait even longer. The temporary solution is to do what you’re doing: collecting a nice set of high-performance affordable amps, like the SW51+, the Lyr 3, Asgard 3 - and in my case the ZDT Jr. - that should work well with a wide range of headphones and do decent justice to higher-end headphones.