I like what you're saying but without enthusiasts, places like this wouldn't exist. Without someone pursuing a better mouse trap, we'd still be swinging rocks. Collectors drive markets and fund innovation, and preserve history. I'm not sure I consider myself a collector because I don't look for "desirable" axes or other things to collect. I have a "collection" I guess, because I have more than I can use. I run across this sort of thing in a lot of my hobbies though. It just so happens that I heat my house with a wood burning furnace. I used to split wood with a poorly hung axe and a cheap hardware store maul, and it worked just fine - actually it worked great and I still have them both. Then I took an interest in what I was doing and the tools I was using.
I am also a firearms enthusiast. I hunt and shoot some IDPA when I can justify the drive and expense. Fortunately, I've managed to find my own places to shoot. But I also play video games, and I would do airsoft or paintball or whatever else if I had the disposable income for all of them. Often that doesn't fit in with the one sided view of folks I run into. Real guns and video games, it can't be. Or in this case, I use my axes AND collect them? It just can't be. My ego tells me, if you like it, you do it. There is always this virtue superiority, even within a community/hobby/sport/activity itself. Here it's customs vs production. Or in shooting it's IDPA vs USPSA. In cars it's this brand vs that brand. It usually really boils down to what I like vs what you like, because people at the top of all these games do it all. An enthusiast doesn't stop at the one pursuit that he/she deems of greatest virtue, they pursue more because they enjoy them and seek new challenges. Beyond that, it often boils down to money. Everything in the world we live in today is simply pay-to-win. If you've got the money honey, I've got the time. And so the opposite is also true. If I can't afford the flashy guns, or axes, or cars, or whatever it is the Joneses have, then I find it more virtuous to do more with less. But that's not how I operate personally. If it interests me, I'm gonna try it. Life is too short to stay in the same rut for the duration just because I somehow perceive it as more virtuous than someone else's rut.
I think for all of us that put steel to wood, there is the knowledge that we are "consuming" the axe to some degree. A collection of them mitigates that, and in any case, for splitting there are plenty of off the shelf tools made today that have no intrinsic or historical value that will do the job just fine. So there are other things beyond what you perceive this community to be about, but actually, practically all of us split wood, and a several of these guys go far beyond that. And almost everyone criticizes Best Made and we do it out of our vastly superior axe virtue.
