I am pretty highly ranked in my area, in tt, so I guess I would qualify. Table tennis is a great, olympic sport, with many different playing styles and a tremendous variety of equipment options. I will try to make it simple and informative.
A table tennis racquet is composed of the wooden part (called the blade) and rubber coverings to strike the ball with. Some blades have carbon, kevlar, or other materials in them, but a good, all wooden blade is the best to start with.
Rubber coverings come in two general flavors. There are sticky rubbers, called "inverted" because the bumps (called "pips") are facing in toward the wood. Striking the ball with inverted rubbers imparts tremendous spin to the ball. These rubbers are best for players who like to use heavy topspin to attack. Brushing the ball with the sticky surface can create arcing topspins, called loops. Search youtube for players like Kreanga and Wang Liqin, and most other highlight videos on there. When you see the ball taking vicious fast arcs with topspin, these are loop shots using "inverted" rubbers. Most people start with inverted rubbers on both forehand and backhand to learn the proper strokes.
The other type of rubbers are "pips" out rubbers, where the bumps are facing outward. There are short pips, where the bumps are not very tall. These rubbers are less spinny than the "inverted" ones, but they are great for hitting flat bullets. Players who stay very close to the table attacking quickly off the bounce with a flat, slapping stroke like these rubbers.
There are also long pips rubbers, where the bumps are long, like blades of grass. These rubbers are good at neutralizing heavy topspin to return heavy underspin, because the pips sway like blades of grass. Watch some youtube videos of defenders like Joo Se Hyuk or Chen Weixing, and watch how they cut under the ball with backhand chop strokes. These guys use long pips on the backhand.
All these rubbers usually have sponge between the playing surface and the wood. I use a "hardbat" racquet with short pips and no sponge, just like they used many decades ago, but I am crazy

. The sponge makes the racquet springier and livelier. Generally, thicker sponges are faster than thinner ones. Something like 1.8 or 2.0mm thick is good to start with.
Do not purchase table tennis stuff from sports authority or any big sports store, because almost all of it is junk. Fortunately....
You can get a "professional" quality table tennis racquet for $30, as said earlier, from zeropong.com, something like an instinct blade with LKT Pro XT 1.8mm rubbers would be a good start with nice control, as keeping the ball on the table with sticky rubber will require a lot of practice for someone who has little experience with such equipment. Another option is the Kama combo from colestt.com; for only $20 it is a great first "real" racquet! Good balls can be purchased for cheap from these places, too.
Good luck with whatever you decide to pick.