Yeah, coulda shoulda woulda. I don't collect minis. If I decide I need a ton of zombies, I've seen at the store where you can get 100 for like, $15. Yeah, they're crap as far as minis go, but they'll show you where the zombies are in relation to the characters.
Now, the big question. Will this absurd emphasis on minis hurt WotC? I think it will. Just because you're a D&D nerd doesn't mean you'll get minis. I mean, if you already like it, you already know you can play it without any minis, so if you haven't used them before, you'll be unlikely to use them in the future (unless, like me, you were already moving that route). But 3.5 barely even hints that it's possible to play D&D without minis. At best you get 2 sentences in the whole of the 3 core books that even hint you could think about not using them, and those two sentences are essentially to tell you to stop thinking about it and go buy your minis, cuz that's the new rule, bub. The rest of the rules don't just use "squares" to give examples, but talk about your miniatures.
So, they've turned it into a game where you not only have to buy a new $20-40 book each month, but hwere you need to buy a huge stock of expensive figures too. I liked that there was a game where I didn't need to "collect" to play. RPGs are it. I think that people will be turning from D&D in even greater numbers now with the new emphasis on minis. They've been alienating a lot of people, which I didn't mind, because I LIKED 3ed better than 1 or 2. But now I'm starting to encourage people not to buy anymore because they ask for too much.
You want to collect? Buy Magic. You want to role play? BESM is cheap and diverse. Decipher has a good system. But don't buy D&D.
Yeah, i'm a exaggerating a little. But the more I look, the less necessary 3.5 becomes. I still like D&D, but I'm hating where it's going in a major way. Maybe they'll recover, but ick. No signs of it yet.