Drat

I started with buckets, and a 5 gallon glass carboy for secondary.
Picked up the bench capper right away.
Bought a 5 gallon brew pot but quickly went to a 7 for full boils.
Haven't picked up a chiller yet, still use the bathtub.
A wine thief is a necessity, less intrusion and will allow for the minimum required sampling to get a SG reading.
Autosiphons are a godsend
I'm now up to 2 6-gallon glass carboy for fermentation and 6 5-gallon secondary glass carboys. At any given time, at least 3 are filled (except now, since I'm moving soon and don't want to move full carboys to storage)

Edit for more stuff:
I'm picking up as many of the square plastic milk carton holders as I can. They make moving carboys around so much easier.
Make sure you have a fermentation area that has little/no temperature fluctuation and stays below 75 degrees, preferably below 70. If that's not possible, you might want to look around for a cheap old fridge or chest cooler and a temp override thing. Or you can go ghetto and search for "son of the fermentation chiller" blueprints online. Temp control is the biggest problem most homebrewers face.

Oh yeah, get a nice notebook to keep detailed brewing notes. They are the most helpful thing ever when you want to recreate a phenomenal brew...