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historicus ●
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TheHugeManatee
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RedandWhite ●
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TheHugeManatee
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strOterp ●
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RedandWhite said...
Maybe its just people my age, but no guy would be caught dead in tortoise shell sunglasses. Extremely feminine feature.
Hey 20 year olds, real men where tortoise shells, get over it. Go shave your arm pits, get a mani/pedi and loofah your soft skin.
kickin' the tires
groove_jones
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strOterp said...
I troll eBay for sunglasses when I'm bored and buy all different kinds. I must have 20 pairs. I like to mix it up and match to my outfits, but I usually buy aviators in different styles. Nothing fancy or expensive. I've got specific pairs for the beach, pool, boat, ball games, bars, work, etc. I'd never spend more than $30 on a pair.
TortugaGrande ●
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TortugaGrande ●
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historicus ●
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strOterp ●
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JJBittenbinder
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historicus ●
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strOterp ●
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RUbaseball
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mrjah
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Ray-Ban RB2132 New Wayfarer Sunglasses | Official Ray-Ban Store
Ray-Ban RB2132 New Wayfarer Sunglasses Available at the Official Ray-Ban Online Store.
www.ray-ban.comYankeeTerp ●
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mrjah said...
It's truly incredible what people will pay for high-end nonprescription sunglasses.
The unit cost to the distributor for almost all sunglasses is $5 or less. In most cases it is $2 or less, tagged and ready for allocation to the point of sale. The markup increases by 3x each time you step up one level from cheap to basic-fashion to upscale to high-end. Yet the materials, the fit, the protection, the optical quality, etc. don't improve by NEARLY that much with each step up. Not even close. Sunglasses are in sparse company when it comes to the absurd markups you see under the glass or on the rack, based on largely illusory improvements per luxury level.
More absurd is the fact that the market supports it. It's utterly irrational, supported by vague and unsupported buyer claims that the $350 pair somehow protects their eyes that much better than the $50 pair. It's a fascinating study in consumer psychology though. You'd better be in love with the brand on the frames, because that's where $298 of your extra $300 is going. The other $2 goes to improved materials and construction over the basic-fashion pair, which really only ever had $2 of materials in them to begin with.
The real lesson, of course, is that it's not supposed to be rational at all, and that's because buyers say so. Dudes included -- they don't really think of sunglasses as a practical accessory, the way they'd think of a hat (usually). They claim to, but they don't, as evidenced by the prices they are willing to pay. Dudes, just like women, think of a pair of sunglasses as a piece of flimsy, easily breakable pretty jewelry made of largely uninteresting, non-precious materials. The consumer behavior doesn't lie: guys wouldn't pay those prices for something of mostly practical value. They're paying for the jewelry experience. Plastic and non-precious-metal jewelry. So basically, costume jewelry.
Watches and, to some degree, shoes see similar behavior from guys. Sometimes quite a bit of it. But not to the degree you see with sunglasses, and particularly considering that men's watches and shoes typically are designed to take a hell of a beating without becoming useless. (Practical.) When I last did some work with a few eyewear distributors, vendor-to-retail markup levels in the neighborhood of 10,000% were not unheard of. Rare territory. And one of those distributors balanced out the spring-and-summer seasonal nature of their business by also distributing massive amounts of a related, fall-and-winter seasonal product. Guess what that product was. Give it a guess.
...Costume jewelry.
From the point of view of a $25-pair-purchaser, a guy downtown wearing expensive sunglasses might as well be accessorizing his dress shirt pocket with a $400 fashion-branded anodized ballpoint pen filled with printer cartridge ink. "This is SO much better for avoiding pinched nerves while writing... oh, and doesn't it look great?"
That being said, buy whatever you like.
MisterSmiley
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Kaisersayzo ●
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Sunglasses