Yeah, that ascending system is the most obsolete thing I'm using but it's there just as a minimal safety means to let me get into the hobby when I feel like and have time, without having to find reason for any significant money out of my pocket.
I can understand your feeling on not fitting in alcohol-easy caving clubs (which helped leading me towards securing that almost funny but not so stereotypical image as written in my other thread, since I've met more than one club and all invariably came out of the same CNC mill).
About throwing money out of the window, if you've got a restaurant with a cafè or even just a saloon near a karst location, your incomes will mostly come from these kind of people.
Showcases in sport stores are also a magnet, so if you can manage to put up it all together or near where "headquarters" are (to discuss about where member will go in the weekend), you can manage to sell quicklinks by weight as if they're first-choice beef meat. Just throw a cool alloy name on it, like SpaceShipZ.
On the other hand, expect to stay open until reeeeally late, like 3 a.m.
Again it's not that I'm against doing things right, it's just that if I go out caving twice a month not even all months and I can't foresee for how long (I'd always get enough of this or have even less spare time to get lost in the mountains on weekends, used equipment of any kind is practically unsellable here), it's easier to justify spending (moral ethics here, no wife involved) a smallish amount of money on new rope and webbing than it is to buy 3 ascenders, 2 racks, a croll, HMS 'biners and a new harness costing the triple of something still safe and working even if awkward.
I'm not here to talk about my condition or beg for something, I'm grateful for your opinions and thoughts but when I'm asked why I'm doing some thing like that, I can do nothing but explain myself to not sound as crazy.
I was already keeping an eye on the links you gave me, still waiting for replies by one of them. Looking how Petzl and Beal are literally on the other side of Alps I might have some luck to find competitive prices on some French online stores.