I started with real amps as a kid, but started again many years later using only modeling.
My parents bought me my first amp in the mid-60s when I was in about 5th grade. It was a silverface Fender Bronco that they bought new. They also bought my first electric guitar that day, a used Silvertone that ended up being impossible to intonate. By the next year, I needed an amp that had enough inputs for both my guitar (upgraded to a Harmony Rocket by then) and a microphone (some Shure model that I can't recall). So they bought me a lightly-used silverface Deluxe Reverb for $200...a lot of money back then for my parents. I still have that Deluxe. It took care of me through high school and beyond. (There were a few years in high school where I mainly used an Acoustic 150B solid state bass head into a homegrown 212 cabinet, but the Deluxe was still what I used at home.) By the late '70s I was using the Deluxe as my clean channel and a Music Man 65 watt 210 combo (into a Music Man 412 cab) as my dirty channel, and I toured with that setup for a few years before getting out of the business. I was burnt out, and for all practical purposes, I stopped playing guitar. I still GASsed a bit, so over time I picked up an ADA MP-1, a Quadraverb, a Boogie .22 combo amp, and even an Ibanez RG550 with one of those newfangled Floyd Rose things. None of them got much use after the newness wore off.
Then about 25 or so years later, I got the urge to start noodling with the guitar again and doing some cheap home recording, so I picked up a POD II. That got sporadic use for a few years, then I ended up with a POD XT Live. That also only got occasional use, since I really didn't have the motivation to come up with new music. Fast forward another chunk of time and I ended up moving back to my home town and hooking back up with some of my musician buddies. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I found myself as the electric guitarist in and acoustic classic rock cover band. I was using the XT Live and running direct to FOH, and was relatively happy with that. Then I heard another local player gigging with an Axe-Fx, and I simply had to have one. It just sounded too real. The rest is history. I've gigged steadily and used nothing except for the Axe-Fx for the past 2-3 years and have no desire or interest in using a conventional amp again. My original Deluxe, the Music Man 210 combo, and the Boogie combo are stashed away in a back room. I don't think any of them have even been powered on for over a decade. (I take that back. I turned on the Boogie a few years ago just to see if it still worked. It did, but it also smelled of stale cigarette smoke after being stored in smoky rooms for about 20 years.) I did upgrade my Mk2 to an XL+ a year or so ago, and will consider the AFX III when it comes out, but my amp buying days are over. (Instead, I've invested in PA equipment, since the better the PA, the better my rig sounds.)