how many of you with an array of cards would not mind being called a card collector?
Me for one. I don't mind being called a card collector, because I have a bunch of cards. I simply do. I even got one of them just to have it (Master Scuba Diver, which is POINTLESS and I admit it freely).
I have often called myself a shameless card collector.
Having said that, very few of my dives (percentage wise) were done with instructors, or divemasters... most of them are just me and my buddy and our own dive plan.
Several board members here have dived with me (or we have waved in the water as we were swimming past each other), if you want to know if I can actually dive you can ask any of them.
I have several cards that didn't require diving at all (cards like both DAN & PADI Oxygen Provider, Equipment Maint., AWARE Coral Reef, etc). I got them over the winter when there was nothing else to do anyway, does that make me a bad person in the eyes of others? If so, then I couldn't care less.
I have a bunch of cards, but then again I will soon have 100 dives in OW, and more than 50 more dives in confined water doing training that doesn't count for anything.
The only way you can tell if a person can dive is to see them in the water, not look at how many cards they may or may not have.
I wouldn't mind others calling me a card collector because I have a bunch of cards... and frankly, I don't give a tinkers damn about what ANYBODY on the internet wants to call me.
If somebody who dives with me has reason to think after doing so that I am a bad diver, then THAT would bother me. So far that hasn't happened, and I don't intend to let it happen, either.