"The Cannibal"
Eddie Merckx, the greatest bike RACER that ever stuck his butt on a saddle, had only 10 and probably didn't even 'need' all of them to do his business. I on the other hand, have 27 on our tandem and sometimes wish for more. I'm sure some of my gear combinations are near duplicates, but I never sat down with a calculator to figure out which is which. I used to figure that having all these gears was kind of like a guy that uses drill bits. When you're just starting out, a half dozen standard drill bits of different sizes gets you through most of your home projects. Now I have a shop and use drill bits 'professionally.' I've got Forstner bits and Brad Point and bits for plastic and fractional sizes and letter sizes and number sizes and some metric sizes. And now that I know how to use them, sometimes I wish I had more - just like gears.