rockm

"Also, if I am going to learn, why not learn to create my own stock from seedlings?"

No reason not to start seedlings for later, say in about 7 years. The problem with using seedlings as learning stock is they cannot teach you about doing bonsai. They can teach you about growing seedlings. Very little actual work can be done on them and if that's all you use, you will have little experience in practices and techniques when they get bigger.

"As a beginner, I just don't want to spend several hundred dollars on a tree just to have it die or ruin it with my lack of expertise"

There is always an enormous learning curve in bonsai at the beginning. Cheap material has it's place. However, I think that buying a relatively expensive "finished" bonsai, within the first two or three years of starting can provide incentive to learn more quickly. Nothing like killing off a $100 specimen to get the bonsaiist to get serious about learning how to keep it alive and proper care.

"Another topic could be the 'rescue' cuttings."

This is another area where beginners look to get "free" material, but wind up wasting an enormous amount of effort and--more importantly-time. Simply cutting off a branch is seen as wasteful and as a source of more trees by many beginners. Learning to simply prune branches and not covet every little snippet is really "doing bonsai." Anyone see the "big names" trying to save cuttings from a big tree they're working on?

For every week you spend air layering an uninspiring twig or branch, you lose in growing out a new one on the primary tree. For every minute you spend tending to vanilla looking cuttings and air layers, you lose with your primary trees.