I think you have two options.

1) you're going to get something super fine that will maintain the edge for a long time without having to round it over like you might do with a crox charged strop, and send a razor off to get professionally honed only once a year or so.

2) you're going to get something to hone with that will work a dull razor as well as finish it and then maintain it.

for 1, I think you could use a c12k, but there is a bit of learning curve to using them. You could also get a balsa lap strop with crox, but that also has a learning curve, and to me is not as good as good as a super finisher hone. A high $$ venture in this area would be getting a short-length japanese hone that cuts fast with a slurry and fine with water.

For 2, I think you would want at least two hones - one that cuts relatively fast as a pre finisher and one that works as a final finisher.

I think if I'm being cheap, I could get along just fine with the chinese hone that woodcraft sells, but I need to have a diamond hone in the 325 grit range to make a slurry with it and keep it flat. It cuts fairly fast with a slurry, but it doesn't cut fine. It does a great job of polishing but cuts very slowly with water only.

I would also agree with the above that you should have several razors. I always like to keep at least two in top shape, so that if something goofy happens, when I go to shave in the morning, I can just pick up the second. Three out of my five razors were less than $20, but as a woodworker, I already had the tooling and stones available to make inexpensive razors shave ready. I think for most people who are dealing with good razors to start, you don't need to go below pre-finisher level unless you really round bevels over with a loaded strop (I don't use a loaded strop for that reason, and prefer a super-fine finish stone instead - geometry never gets out of whack).

Anyway, when you're learning to hone, that's probably a good idea, too, because you'll not get stuck with adverse experience with one razor holding you up - say if you hone and you're not getting as good of an edge as you want, and you're stuck with a razor that's pulling.

Lastly, honing is a skill builder of sorts. You might not be as good at it right off the bat as you'd like, but keep in mind that you can do it fairly cheaply (a c12 and a diamond hone should be doable for $100, and you can shave off a c12 comfortably with nothing but a bare strop or some palm stropping with good technique). Err on the side of any issues with known good hones being "the indian and not the arrow" when you're trying to figure out what you're doing.