jm82792 it really depends on what you intend to do with model, for instance if you are just creating a single rendered image you really don't have to worry too much about poly count as long as your machine can handle it RAM wise.It's only when you get into the area of game modeling and animation you have to worrry about poly count.Game models these days can go quite high but an average would be between 7k to 12 k , as for animation it depends on how much you have in the scene and can animate successfully with the amount of polys you have.
30k would be exceptable for animation but a little too high for games as it stands right now.