i’ve got a blog that i occasionally use to talk about some of my favorite yo-yo’s and the experiences/feelings i associate with them.
i’d say these 6 are pretty important to me:
my first tom kuhn no jive. just a stock one i bought from dave’s skill toys a long time ago. i always come back to it. it’s the yo-yo that made me fall in love with fixed axle (and wood, specifically). i’ve hit some hard tricks on it and pushed myself through more imaginary barriers on it than i have with any other yo-yo.
clean machine no jive i received as a gift from jason tracy. probably my best-playing no jive. i’ve taken it all over the place and enjoyed watching tons of good friends hit great stuff on it. playing it taught me that stuff like kamikaze, red clover, suicides, and lacerations weren’t impossible on fixed axle. also learned lunar landing with it, which may be my favorite trick.
spyy ‘eh’. the fixed axle yo-yo i used for a year straight. probably safe to say i have more hours on that yo-yo than all my others combined, and the most influential to how i currently play. won the 2012 fixed axle championship of all the world on it, too. 
also represents a great gift from steve from spyy in supporting me on that crazy idea.
midnight special. though this isn’t the original, the midnight special was my first yo-yo (kind of - i traded an early run yomega brain for it). i learned gravity pull, forward pass, and around the world with it. when i broke it, i just bought another one like it and kept doing that for as long as i could find midnight specials in stores. i didn’t “get good” with it, but i learned to ENJOY yo-yoing with it, which was way more valuable.
thp raider. my first bearing yo-yo, given to me by my campers luke and sean at the end of their ymca camp session in 1998. learned split the atom, barrel rolls, hydrogen bomb on it. had it in my pocket when i asked my wife to marry me (wasn’t why she said yes, i think).
custom mag. at $40 i thought this yo-yo was a ludicrous expense when i bought it in 1999. thought it was cooler than either the cold fusion or sb-2 though. beefcaked, i can still hit pretty much anything on it (except maybe fingerspins lol… ouch). this was my favorite yo-yo for the 4 years or so following the late 90’s boom.
superyo renegade. initially bought this one on a lark because it came with a spare string which i wanted for my mag which i kept in my teacher-desk. ended up being a WAY better player once it broke in. later, i learned all the escolar/longoria canon on it and still love it to death.