May I offer a somewhat contrary post, that eventually leads to the same conclusion?
My love for Leicas is shared by an equal passion - for Rolleiflex TLRs. I've owned a Rollei of one sort or another since 1966, and now have five. All get used.
I adore Rolleiflexes for the same reasons all the posters in this thread love Leicas - except for the format and technique for use, which of course greatly differs. Different strokes, different folks.
Like everyone else I know, I went into Leicas in the mid 1980s, when I hd a little money to throw around for the first time in my career - I bought first an M2 and then a near-mint L3 single stroke which was so mint👍, I resisted even taking it out for fear of getting a speck of dust on it. In very fast order I added an Elmar 50/2.8, a lovely lens, then a Summaron 35/3.5 screw mount with an M adapter which produced lovely pastel tones but was unsharp at the corners at settings lower than f/5.6. Ditto an Elmar 90/4, a 135/4.5, and even a Telyt 200 which I kept for a year but never used, being basically a wide-angle sort of shooter. The M3 came with a Summarit 50/1.5, a lens that always produced superb results in low light situations.
Some of my very best 35mm images in the half century I've been involved in photography, were taken with the M2 and the Elmar, a lens hood, a K2 or UV filter to suit whatever film I was using, and a Weston Master V meter with an Invercone for exposure readings. I'm now scanning some of the several thousand Leica images, and still marvel at how sharp they were, with such beautiful mid tones. Good films were available at the time, which also helped. Part of my great joy in photography left me the day Rochester stopped producing Kodachrome.
After about 12 months fiscal reality set in, notably so when my elderly 404 Peugeot broke down and needed massive (and hideously expensive) repairs, the money for which I didn't have. So the Leica gear was sold off, mostly for better prices than I'd purchased it. I've missed it to this day, but having learnt my lesson well in the '80s, I never reinvested in Leitz, mostly due to ridiculouslyhigh costs for the equipment in Australia where users tend to construct altars for their Leicas, light candles and burn incense to them and worship them like holy icons.
My Rolleis still get used and continue to give me exceptional images, alongside Nikkormats and D-Nikons. In the early 2000s I bit the bullet and bought (at a time when film camera prices had plummeted due to the inflow into the retail market of the first really cheap DSLRs) a Contax G1 kit., which to me is ALMOST as good as owning a Leica. It isn't really, of course, but I make do, as needs must.
Earlier this year I lucked into the find of a lifetime, an almost mint Leica M3 single stroke with 35, 50 and 90 lenses from a deceased estate, at a price I couldn't pass up. My partner uses it, and produces truly fine work with it. I long to expropriate it for my own use but bite my tongue, swallow my envy, and go on using my Contax and Rolleis. From the same source I also got an almost mint 2.8E2 kit which serves me well and keeps me from slipping back into Leicaphobia - yet the temptation remains, it's a lifetime thing.
To all of you who own and use Leicas, may I say - I envy you. But my time has passed.
