No justification is necessary. Musical gear can be a raison d'etre. I used to love hunting for used high-quality instruments and accessories across the country (today one can do this across the world).
Back to Rickenbackers, the bassists best known for using them are probably McCartney, Chris Squire, Geddy Lee, and perhaps Lemmy Kilmister. However, Squire insisted that it was seeing the Who and John Entwistle that motivated him to be a Rickenbacker aficionado.
Entwistle did indeed use Rickenbackers occasionally, and he had a bunch of super-rare ones, including an 8-string, which is almost certainly the bass on which he wrote "Success Story" from The Who By Numbers.
One last Chris Squire story: He appeared on Rockline once, and an excited fan babbled to Chris about all the great guitarists he had worked with, including Steve Howe and Jimmy Page. Squire gruffly repiied: "Steve Howe could stay in tune."