San Serif
You may find this hard to believe - but I could not live without Helvetica. All weights, condensed, extended... I just couldn't.
I love Today, Formata and Fruitger. Lately, I've been impressed what DIN can do. And I tend to you a lot of Classico URW (It has more weights then what the big manufacturers sell for Optima - and you can get 3 to 5 more characters on the line in the same point size.)

Serif
Tough call - there are so many beautiful ones - but my #1 will always be Goudy. I just love that face and it's design. Love the little diamond bullets and punctuation (the real stuff guys - not what Linotype, Adobe. etc. did to it). It's old but always so fresh.
One's I need for the Westerns I do - are Slab Serifs mostly. Lubalin, Memphis but also Claredon and oh my, Cheltenham and Garamond. None of those are my favorites, but I'd lose a lot of work if I didn't have them. (Also Eurostile, but that's san serif - and as you can see - I won't mention it as one I can't live without.)

Scripts
I have really come to love the American Script-type that Rob Leuschke has developed. They are beautiful. I wish I could afford them all. I even entered his contest to name the latest one last year... hoping... lol. Because of Leuschke - I then became familiar with Sudtipos - and they have some very interesting scripts as well - especially Ministry. For invitation to a wedding - Stuyvesant still holds up. (It was my favorite engraving face when I worked in fine stationery and engraving, too many years ago.) I am not fond of formal scripts, because I tend not to need any in the design work I receive. However, if I were to keep a few around - I'd use Edwardian, BIckham and Snells. (Park, Murray Hill, Commercial -- even French - they just don't appeal

Display faces
House Industries - I want the entire library -- LOL -- okay, for this year and probably next. Great fun faces -
There are many others - but I was always taught to keep an open mind and make sure to "marry" the type to the artwork. So I wouldn't want to limit myself to a few...

Thank you for letting me go on -- of course, these are my personal preferences, along with some work ethics -- and... only my opinion.

Like your wardrobe - it depend on how you feel when you get up, or what the occasion is to dress for - before you decide on your clothes. Same holds true for type.

This might be of interest: Typophile’s List of “Essential” Typefaces

John, you list your must have 'tools' but don't mention your line of work. As a game perhaps we can guess from the list of types you present. My first stab...

You design public service flyers and newsletters for pensioners?

How wonderfully rude you are!
No, I am a writer and a psychotherapist, based in Banbury UK. I was a barrister before that. My father, incidentally was a practising architect over here, now retired. When working for the LCC (London County Council) as it was then called, he designed the lettering for our Chelsea Bridge (the one over the Thames).

Anyway, is my selection of faces so antique? i don't know. I prefer to think of them as, well, classics. What are your own favourites?? Perhaps I really am out of touch?

>How wonderfully rude you are!

Thanks!

>Anyway, is my selection of faces so antique?

Not at all, they'd be appropriate tools for a wide range of projects, including writing and psychotherapy. If you'd replied that you designed rave flyers or video game interfaces then I would have been surprised by the tools you'd chosen.

Cheers, Si

Well, I don't know, Si: these days, snowboarders are doing crochet and knitters are making tree cozies for the hugger movement -- I think some of the "classic" fonts are due for a comeback as tools for the folks on "the bleeding edge."

Heck, if "fashion" is willing to re-embrace shoulder pads and big hair of the 1980s, anything is possible....

>Heck, if “fashion” is willing to re-embrace shoulder pads and big hair of the 1980s, anything is possible….

Again, I have to remind you that what you see on the streets of Calgary might not be repeated in the rest of the world. ;-)

I forgot one serif from my list, another must have for me. Joanna (designed Eric Gill) a wonderful slab serif, that is beautiful and marvellously legible.