40k vs Life

Hi Again Folks

I recently went to my local gaming club for a quick game and something came to my attention.  I noticed there were some new faces there and 1 guy had brought 3 armies to play.  Now they were not Apocalypse ready being only around 1k each but I asked around and was surprised to find a number of players had more than 3 armies.

Now I have 3 myself, my original army the Deathwing, and it's support army the Ravenwing.  And my recent addition of my Eldar army rounds out my collection.  I guess what I am trying to get to here is with all the recent (last 12 months) releases and the forthcoming offerings of Dark Eldar, Necron, etc. has it gotten more common for everyone to collect many small armies or a few large ones.
                                           An insane amount of Dark Angels

I know what side of the fence I fall on but would be very interested to see where everyone else is at.  I get the impression of folks buying the lastest army box set to get the niftiest new rules and units, while all the time sticks in the mud like myself patiently plod on with outdated codexs in the hope of a brighter future release all the time increasing the size of the army beyond what is possible to ever play.

Any thoughts or observations are most welcome!

Cheers