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My brother-in-law is a chef and he, and almost all of his chef/sous chef friends all have pretty impressive knife collections they bring with them to the job each day. Primarily Japanese knives, purchased one at a time as they save up the money.

While prep cooks will use stock kitchen knives, most chefs will use their own tools, which tend to be pretty expensive.

Our cook in college would use the most beat up cheap aluminum pots, pans, and roasters but he insisted on bringing his metal briefcase of knives with him to work every day.

The top rated chef's knife by Cook's Illustrated is only about $30 (and it's awesome): http://www.amazon.com/Victorinox-47520-Fibrox-8-Inch-Chefs/d...

You only need two knives -- a chef's knife and a paring knife. Anything beyond that may be useful occasionally, but 99% of your time should be spent with those two staples.