Ask online how to start blacksmithing and you will quickly be told you need a proper anvil — heavy, named-brand, ideally costing a serious sum — and that anything less is a toy. This is presented as gatekeeping wisdom. I think it is the single biggest thing stopping curious people from ever lighting a forge, and it is mostly wrong for a beginner.
What an anvil actually has to do
An anvil is, at its core, a large, hard, heavy mass that returns the energy of your hammer blow back into the work instead of absorbing it. Mass and hardness under the hammer face are what matter. A beginner learning to move metal does not need the perfect horn, the hardy hole, the pristine edges, or the prestige brand. They need a heavy chunk of hard steel that does not move and does not deaden the blow. Plenty of cheap or improvised options do that job well enough to learn on for a long time.
Why the big-anvil dogma persists
Partly because experienced smiths genuinely love good anvils and forget how they started; partly because "you need the real thing" feels like respect for the craft. But the effect on a newcomer is paralysis: they cannot find or afford the recommended anvil, so they never begin, and the craft loses someone it could have kept.
Just start
Begin with the heaviest hard surface you can sensibly get hold of, learn to move hot metal, and let real experience tell you what your next anvil should be. The good anvil is a reward for sticking with it, not a toll to enter. Far better to be forging on something humble than dreaming about something perfect you never bought.