Actually, you don't need CFW to run emulators: You only need userland.well I didn't plan on updating it was just my only choice lol but yeah the selling and rebuying thing to me personally wouldn't be worth it as ill be losing money (I only buy new and would have to sell my 3ds for cheaper) just for cfw I mean CFW isn't THAT important to me I mainly liked the fact of unlocking the cpu for older games but cia was a nice addition but I think I can live without it if need be it just would have been nice to have
However, without CFW, you won't be able to update your system to latest firm if there isn't a userland exploit available for it.