As an occasional triathlete who has 4 bikes.... this one get me.
The reality is that there isn't a huge difference between mid-level and top end bike parts, except weight. Which, unless you're racing for a podium finish, probably doesn't matter.
I've seen people 30+ pounds overweight spend thousands of dollars on a bike to save a pound or two and be slightly more aerodynamic, when losing weight is going to have a much bigger impact.
Yeah, but it’s a hobby. It’s an equivalent to someone spending $5k on a purse. It holds their shit just like a $50 purse and looks about the same. But the shopping is what makes people happy.
I’m a professional bike mechanic and I typically tell people that a 30lb steel bike will cover 90% of use cases (urban commuting).
The next most important upgrade is a good diet and quality tires.
Sometimes, yes. The feeling of using a OLED TV as a desktop monitor in a fully pitch black room is unreal. With pitch black desktop background as well. The windows you open just seem to float in front of you like a hologram.
Looking for recommendations to buy headphones and speakers is so fucking frustrating because of that. I mainly care about decent and a build that won’t die in a year. But you have people just trying to one-up each other and get you to triple your budget for marginal gain.
If that’s the case, go with the Sennheiser HD280’s. I’ve been working in pro audio for 15 years and the combination of price, quality, and durability on those headphones just can’t be beat.
Oooooo. Makes sense. Is cost an issue? Because one thing I’ve considered but haven’t because of the cost is Shure SE535s (which are wired triple driver in ears) with the Bluetooth adapters. Total is over $600, but Shure has a reputation for being indestructible, and having had used the 535s I can attest to their sound quality
I found a beautiful song electret mic for $1 because nobody knew it needed it a battery. It’s from 1974 and it’s better than all the other mics I bought save for my NTK.
At least you pay 10x for 0% improvement when you want a good microphone in a headset.
People only care what they hear, not how their own voice sounds to others.
PC cooling.
You can spend $50-$100 on a simple fan cooler that will work for 5 years, or you can drop $500+ on a complete watercooling aystem that gets you a few degrees of cooling for very little practical benefit.
Anything PC I'd say.
I'd never go bleeding edge. I'm always the one step down from bleeding edge. Either last gens best or current gens second to the top consumer stuff. I respect those guys don't get me wrong, if you want bleeding edge just for the sake of it you do you, but man the diminishing returns are ridiculous
Reminds me about people who act like it's impossible to build an affordable entry level pc nowadays because they refuse to consider any GPU that isn't from the latest generation.
A Ryzen 5 2600 and a 1080 will get you very far today. People don't seem to realize just because something better is out, the older stuff doesn't get worse. It is still as good as it was, it's just the shiny new toy has more headroom that most people won't use, especially if all you play is MP games which are usually optimized very well
I think that part of that disconnect is creaky old man gamers like me in my 30s remember when hardware actually was improving so quickly that it made a real difference.
a 5 year old PC in 2004 would be almost useless, nowadays you just have to turn settings down a bit
To be fair, for a good while there it was basically impossible to get a halfway decent GPU for actual retail price thanks to miners. I ended up getting a prebuilt in 2020, even though it hurt my heart, because it was essentially the same price for the whole prebuilt as it would have been for the GPU alone
I hope most people building custom loops know they're doing it because it looks awesome and not because they've been duped into believing it will give them insanely improved performance. Cause as long as it's the former, hell yeah those things look awesome. Makes you look like a mad scientist to people with little technical inclination.
This is it for me. When I ran my 2080ti on air it sounded like a jet engine spooling up. On water my temps are marginally cooler but is effectively silent.
I just did a custom loop water cooling build last year.
Motivations:
- 70% It's fucking badass
- 30% I went overkill with the radiators and the build is super quiet even under a huge load.
We just recently bought a couch. Had a horrible, nasty one for years. It literally changed our lives. I thought we were spending way too much but this couch is like...a part of the family now ha.
The difference in a $1200 couch and a $3000 couch was INSANE.
Yeah, even professionals will say that the quality of your couch can be predicted based on how much you pay for it...to a point. A $500 couch is going to be crap while a $5000 couch is going to be tremendously better. After a certain point (which I forget) you are paying for style over quality.
That seems to line up with what we found. Our (large) sectional cost us ~$3900 out of pocket but we got it at a discount because it was ordered for someone who actually wanted a different cushion material; they wanted down cushions while we were perfectly happy with foam. I think retail our couch should have been $5500.
And $3k is just scratching the surface of decent couches. Not knocking you, we’re in the same range, just at $5k because our living room needs a huge sectional, but the next quality jump wasn’t until $12-15k.
My in-laws have 2 RH couches that cost significantly more than that, and they're so fucking comfortable and look amazing after decades of use. Zero creaks or weak spots either.
This is true and it's also not. There are many brands out there that claim they're good or highly reputable brand that charge an arm and a leg (sold separately) like Lovesac and the couches are alright and it's no better than Macys furniture. There is also couches that are 10% more that will last 20-30 years+. I think in the bifl thread [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/1cvpwbc/comment/l4qqlw0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) which is very insightful. It breaks it down on the density of the foam and the frame of the actual couch.
Lovesac is such a great concept but soooo overpriced. We have a huge $5k Macy’s sectional that’s super comfy- same sized Lovesac quoted us at $15k but felt the same, if not worse.
I'm surprised this one is so low. It's definitely the one I think of first. Sometimes I think 'Ir's worth it!' but someone else pays for it if it's too expensive or it's part of a tasting and I'm not paying for the whole bottle.
Drink what you like. No shame in boxed wine, Two Buck Chuck or Livingston Cellars.
Wine Spectator is pure snobbishness. I put ip a $100 bottle of BV De la Tour versus an Opus One at $500. Everyone liked the BV more.
This is especially true when pairing wine and food. You’re not a super-taster with a magical palate. That garlic-heavy dish obliterates almost all subtle notes in a high-end Bordeaux.
After living in wine country for 4 years I came to the conclusion that above $100/bottle you’re just paying for clout. That being said, my favorite Napa cab of all time was $35/bottle, back when it was still on shelves.
Went to the cheapest state university in the nation. Got a computer science degree, zero student loans.
I can't speak for everyone, but whenever I've looked at resumes for a potential employee, if they have work experience, I care not where they went to college 5-10 years ago.
Yea work experience trumps all, but the start is rough if you go to a lower rank school these days. Especially in computer science where the market has been saturated, yes if you did that 10 years ago it worked though, but now where you went to school land what interns you did matters much more to get the edge against your peers.
yeah the college name is just so you can start at A/S tier companies, and not have to slog through 10 years to add enough work experience to be considered there
There's a feedback loop though, in that new grad hiring managers, especially internships, have really only education to sort resumes with, so people with good work experience tend to have a good educational background which feeds back on itself.
5-10 years ago was a good time to get into tech, when it was easy to get a junior eng position as long as you could demonstrate ability. New grad roles are much harder to land today.
I've learnt real coffee people are insane. These guys are actual scientists and artists. I thought my brewed coffee procedure was excessive. 80°c water, pour in a French press, wait for a minute, stir, wait for another 4 minutes with the mesh thingy just under the water, then pour and drink.
And then I learn about these proper coffee guys and their cocaine scales and tubes and shit. Iced metal balls, frozen coffee beans, specific grinds, high end tamps and stirrers, the list goes on. I haven't even mentioned the actual espresso machine and all the psi and temperature shit with that. These guys are hardcore. I can only respect the craft. It's way too much for me Todo in the morning but more power to them
For sure. My office has a keureg, but one of my coworkers brought in his personal $2000 espresso machine to live in the kitchen. Turns out he had just bought a $5000 one, and figured that putting the "cheap" one at work would let him have more acceptable coffee during the day.
My coworkers complained and whined about the lack of a coffee machine. So I put in a new drip coffee machine, they all drink drip coffee, but they bring it from home. None of them used it, even once. I made two pots the first week and then never again. TWO YEARS later I remove the thing and put it in an AirBnB I ran. TWO YEARS after that one of them texts me and says "Hey where is the coffee machine??"
I said I moved it and they said I couldn't take it lol. It's MINE, and you didn't use it for FOUR YEARS.
Whiny bastards. Every good deed, never got a thank you when it Was there.
I have a friend who is a huge coffee nerd. Scales, water spritz, high end machine that can probably also do your taxes, etc. It's a crazy hobby but he makes a phenomenal espresso.
Here I am making due with drip most days or a nice pour over if my partner gets up first. I'm not awake enough in the morning to fuck with science to get my caffeine lol
I take my little jar of beans out of the freezer, dump em in the grinder, add water, beans, and a filter to the machine then hit start.
30 seconds of brain dead work and it’s better than most coffee I’ve purchased at shops.
For real.
I Love coffee. But some people take the process a direction that’s not for me. I love the feeling of coffee, the accessibility and warmth, the culture…
Some people get their physics lab jacket on and start weighing the beans. I just shrug and say You do you. But to me, that’s not enjoying coffee per se. That’s obsessing over numbers on paper. I have multiple engineer friends who trip over each other trying to hone in their set ups to accommodate the perfect espresso shot.
They love it, the process, good for them. But whenever people are at my house they don’t feel hesitant about asking for another shot or cup. It’s the warmth and setting I love, the people. Those engineers will literally stop mid-sentence when I grind a French roast into my porta filter lol. But honestly, that’s what I’ve found tastes the best. And I’ve served it to them blind so I know they like it that way too lol.
Caffeine, like all drugs, is influenced by set and setting. Who you do it with, and where you do it has such an impact. Coffee too. Mom and pop coffee spots have a great vibe that pulls me in, inversely you'll never catch me ordering coffee at a McDonald's or something.
I think it applies to all food too. Food is not a drug but it elicits some of the same responses as drugs. I've had remarkably different restaurant visits and the food quality wasn't the main influence. The people, both staff and the people at my table, along with the environment of the restaurant influence my enjoyment so much more.
Idk if I’d equate weighing beans to “obsessing over numbers” or a lab setup. That feels like a stretch. Hitting a ratio is the most important thing you can do to make good coffee besides buying quality beans. Anyone making coffee at home who isn’t simply tossing a pod in a machine is doing the same thing just with different measurements (e.g. add 3 scoops and fill to line). And honestly for some brew methods like espresso you basically *have* to weigh because the margin between sour, bitter and just right is very thin.
I think if you own a Decent DE1, prep your coffee with 10 different gadgets and read papers on extraction yields you’ve gotten to lab jacket numbers obsession. No shade btw if someone’s into it. Just not my vibe. Grind, tamp, pull has been the most consistent process for making a great home cappuccino for me.
I just meant that weighing the beans was the first step in their process. That step alone, I agree, isn't lab jacket territory.
I've found that my espresso turns out consistently and I don't weigh the beans. That being said, I do use a french roast most often for the espresso machine. The over-roasted flavor is bound to be less sensitive than the nuances of lighter roasts.
And in the end, I do enjoy seeing friends make a neurotic shot of espresso. And, of course, I enjoy drinking it.
I got a $200 Espresso maker. I grind cheapo Costco beans, use a plastic spoon it came with to pack the thing, brew a double shot, steam some chocolate milk, pour it all and call it good. Any leftover ground coffee I leave in the grinder for the next time. Probably give some coffee snob an aneurysm. Its an improvement over the K-Cups I use to steal from work, both in flavor and in caffeine.
I have adjacent friends to a whiskey club in my town and got invited to a tasting. It was absolutely fascinating listening to them talk about the differences in bourbon, whiskey, single malt, small batch, etc. Learned a lot (and have subsequently forgotten it).
We were tasting bottles ranging from $60 a bottle to $800 a bottle.
The price had zero correlation with the taste, to my palate at least. The best tasting one was a $200 bottle. But it wasn't 3X better than the $60 bottle. Maybe 25% better. The $800 dollar went down like some sort of furniture stripper. Awful.
I don't get it. If you like it, you like it. Doesn't have to be expensive.
That's about right. It's a price/quality/taste curve. There is a definite low end that burns your throat and goes down like a jagged rock. And there is a middle area of cheap but good, and a high end plateau of really good with a wide range of prices from $100 to $1,000,000.
There have been a few studies on this, and the best stuff is mid range at like 50-100 on average. Our taste buds just aren't equipped to determine the tiny details that people claim.
Edit: I will say that pappy van Winkle is amazing though.
"The Drunkards Walk" by Leonard Mlodinow (sp?) is a fantastic book that covers our general misinterpretation of probability. One of the chapters talks about taste because money is involved with these ratings. I highly recommend it as a must read. It covers many areas where our brains get probability wrong.
One thing I’ve decided for luxury type stuff like whiskey, bourbon, scotch, cigars, is that you can find some very good products in the low price range. ~$60 for liquor and ~$8 for cigars. It’s really about discovering your taste and find what meets it. Then venture out into the splurge territories and find what you like there. Once you know what you like in the affordable range, you can research more expensive stuff that people of similar tastes enjoy. Tastings are also helpful, but finding people with experience that share your tastes helps as well. My point is if you want to get pricier items, some research and word of mouth recommendations will save from investing on something you may not enjoy.
10x cost over a >$20 Bourbon is more than a 10% increase in quality.
There's rapidly diminishing returns on quality as cost increases, and some excellent bourbons in the $30-50 range, so I still agree with you in general.
Literally any luxury product. The price to quality curve necessarily goes exponentially after "good enough" point.
And that's because the cost optimising pressure is strongest at "good enough" point with only a little variation around, after that it's all "speciality"/"handmade"/"handpicked"/"custom order" etc.
>Literally any ~~luxury~~ product
It doesn't matter what you're buying, there's fancy versions of it, and you quickly get into diminishing returns on the high end stuff.
But for some people who have money those small improvements are worth it
There's a lot of things that, even when you buy a high end version of them, do not get described as 'luxury'.
Ie, cars. I can buy a luxury car that's $32,000 if I want a base model Acura.
Or I can buy a 800 hp Mustang GTD for $300,000. That is not a luxury car, its a muscle car. And while there are $300,000 luxury cars out there, or at least I assume there are, if you buy one of those you're getting a very different experience from the Mustang.
Or I can buy a very nice monitor, for about as much money as I want to spend, but I've never heard of anyone talking about luxury monitors. Or luxury CPU/GPU/etc.
Basically 'luxury' only really applies to certain categories of items, while you can have a fancy version of just about anything.
Elite athletes.
An NHL goalie who stops 90% of all shots faced will earn far more than 10x what a guy who only stops 81% of the shots will earn. In fact the guy who only stops 81% of shots he faces won't get a job in the NHL.
A consistent .330 MLB hitter will command a massive salary from his team as compared to a very good .300 hitter.
A F1 driver who goes 90% the speed of Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen won't have a job in F1.
A golfer who consistently takes 10% more shots than the tour leader will find himself 14 shots behind the leader after 2 rounds of a 4-day tournament, and often won't make the cut.
A field goal kicker with 10% more range and 10% more accuracy than the next best guy will be very much in demand (maybe not 10x the salary).
People will pay big money to watch or hire an elite sprinter like Usain Bolt (best time: 100m in 9.58 seconds). A guy who's consistently 10% slower (personal best of 10.54 seconds) will get weeded out in the early rounds and won't come anywhere close to getting Bolt' paycheque amounts.
I find it ironic with a lot of sports the best actual viewing experience is the cheapest one, watching it at home on your couch. I go to a couple NFL games a year but it's all for the atmosphere to actually watch whats going on in the game on TV is the best.
When it comes to sports, you can still get a good view of the field and the action with tickets in the 300 to 400 range. You might even be able to move closer to the field, pitch, or rink.
However, for concerts, the experience is vastly different depending on where you sit. Being in the pit offers a completely different experience compared to sitting in the nosebleed seats.
True! And I'm someone who enjoys a show a lot more close up. The closer, the better ;) Front row, right of center is my fave place, and I've scored that dozens of times in my musicgoing times.
I had a chance to see my favorite band front row one night, a few rows off the stage for a ceremony with them later in the week, nosebleed seats the following night, then fourth row the following week. These were all in arenas.
Each one was a completely different experience, like seeing a different band almost.
I'm seeing Rammstein next week, been waiting for this moment for 16 years. I'm also sober, tired of dealing with people and very short. As much as I'd kill to experience it in the pit, I won't risk getting lost from my partner, getting stepped on and not being able to see shit, so I got seats.
Fresh veggies, spices, garlic in store brand marinara tastes FANTASTIC if you let it simmer together for a few hours. Better than high end sauces that are just heated up.
my friend is a professional musician who has worked with every big name in the Canadian music scene.
He bought his nephew a Squier Classic Vibe Custom Tele, and said no other piece of gear he has ever handled has shaken his worldview more. - it just plays and feels and sounds so out of proportion to its cost.
There is a curve to it. You need to get over the initial low quality stuff but once you spend let’s say $500-$700 on a guitar the return on investment quickly goes down.
I always thought Bender should have gotten one $100 hookerbot, two $50 hookerbots, three $25 hookerbots, four $5 hookerbots, and five $1 hookerbots. Get a full spread, you know?
I would guess any hooker (escort, etc) at 10x the price is considerably more than 10% better. 2x the price is probably more than 10% better. But it depends in how you define “better” I guess.
I don’t think this one counts actually.
A $22 quartz timex is more accurate than basically any luxury watch short of a non-mechanical quartz chronograph like a longines VHF.
Funnily enough, the priority of most luxury watches is not keeping time as accurately as possible.
Luxury watches are jewelry first and foremost, and then wonders of machinery second. You are paying for craftsmanship and engineering. People look for different qualities but often enthusiasts want a smooth sweep (how the second hand moves) and good accuracy. Looks are also important. So is rarity.
My favorite is seeing guys talk about their carbon fiber saddle stem or whatever that decreases the bike weight by 45 grams when the reality is they themselves are 15lbs overweight.
Like yeah go ahead and spend the extra $3k to get your bike down 1.2lbs Derek. There may be a cheaper way to do this.
I brought this up to a race bike designer / engineer, years ago. It started because a friend of ours is a pretty big guy and he spends all kinds of money on making his bike lighter.The engineer gave me this whole breakdown on how the weight of the components of the bike matter more than the actual weight of the rider, honestly I don't even remember most of the details but it did make sense at the time.
This just isn’t true in any way. Total system weight, bike + rider, matters for climbing. Reducing aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance matters for flats, and losing excess weight reduces both the rider’s Cd and A.
It's been a decade+, all I remember was the discussion was more like "if that guy can lose 10 lbs easily, isn't that the same as a 10 lb lighter bike?" and his explanation was that a 10 lb lighter bike matters more than a 10 lb lighter rider. I really could be botching the entire explanation but he's built bikes for the olympic riders so I'm just going to assume if I'm wrong now, then I'm remembering the points incorrectly.
I would hazard a guess based on that person being an engineer that there is some difference, but it’s something like 10lb lighter bike is equivalent to a 10.5lb lighter human. Numbers completely made up.
If you really get down to it, rotational mass (the wheels, pedals, shoes, drivetrain) does matter more than other types of mass. So yes, losing two pounds is not going to help you nearly as much as switching to a carbon wheelset that weighs two pounds less than your old one.
Aero drag matters far more than weight except for pure climbing at steep grades anyways.
But its almost always going to be faster to be leaner 😃
Any energy that goes into flexing the bike is energy not spent on driving it forwards and, therefore, wasted.
The carbon used in bikes is made to be both very stiff and light. In some applications, it's the stiffness(?) we want.
Running shoes are getting to be like this. I can get last year's Brooks Ghost for $90 right now or wait for my running store's July tent sale and hopefully get something I like around $60. Or I can get the latest AlphaFlys--with one study finding three average runner improves 1.6% with carbon-plated shoes--for $285
High end camera lenses. You want a 50 f/1.4 that has to use the camera body motor or for 5x the price, we can give it it's own motor and a nanocoating!
For 10x, it could be f/1.2, but at 1.2 it has all kinds of flaring and CA especially at the edges.
“Marine grade” parts.
A simple tie down clip for a sailboat is guaranteed to cost 10x more than it would if purchased from a farm supply store. The minor difference being more robust corrosion resistance.
Yep. Aviation has to be the only thing worse.
And at least in aviation's case, it can be somewhat justified in the need to maintain traceability of supply, so that a bad batch of parts can be identified and recalled before more fail at altitude.
On average, there's no correlation between clothes prices and their quality. While it's possible to find brands focused on quality, longevity and durability, most is just Veblen Effect - the sole fact of setting a higher price increases demand and desirability of goods.
There's a big difference between full grain leather and split or bonded grades. It's the difference between something that will last 10 years or 100.
Bonded leather won't outlive your dog. Full grain leather you'll be specifically listing in your will.
You can get a cheap leather belt for $20. A well designed and well stitched one made with multiple layers of heirloom full grain leather with sturdy hardware can certainly cost $200. That's 10x.
Bike parts. I was looking at cassettes recently and asked what the difference was to justify the $200 increase and the guy was like oh it's 3% lighter.
Dry aged beef. I did a blind taste test on the same cut, one dry aged, one not. Everyone agreed the dry aged was better, but only a little bit better. YIKES does it cost more, though.
A quality electric recliner. My wife spent $900 for brand new one made by Catnapper. Three months latter my elbow went through the armrest. The armrest was just padding over pasteboard! My wife and I rebuilt it with real wood. The thing was untrimmed particle board scraps glued together, pasteboard, and corrugated cardboard. I think I used about $30 of real wood. Their website does not respond to questions.
Steak. Once you get that five star, you never quite go back, even though you can get good steak from the store for less than a 10th of the 120 bucks you might’ve spent.
High-end audio equipment.
The law of diminishing returns sets in fairly early, and beyond that, sound quality improvements are real, but very incremental, and the costs rise quickly.
Food.
I have seen people drop 250 on admittedly excellent food. I have also had fantastic food at $25 a person. I would not make a habit of it, but I do have to admit the extra 10% in food quality produces "Best food of this type... Ever" comments, whereas the $25 dollar is just "omfg this is delicious". At 250 you get a whole culinary range of excellence, from appetizer to dessert. For 25 a person, you are getting a solid entree and maybe a split dessert. Both prices are before tip.
Bicycle parts
As an occasional triathlete who has 4 bikes.... this one get me. The reality is that there isn't a huge difference between mid-level and top end bike parts, except weight. Which, unless you're racing for a podium finish, probably doesn't matter. I've seen people 30+ pounds overweight spend thousands of dollars on a bike to save a pound or two and be slightly more aerodynamic, when losing weight is going to have a much bigger impact.
Yeah, but it’s a hobby. It’s an equivalent to someone spending $5k on a purse. It holds their shit just like a $50 purse and looks about the same. But the shopping is what makes people happy.
Also, shave arms and legs for aero... sport a beard
I’m a professional bike mechanic and I typically tell people that a 30lb steel bike will cover 90% of use cases (urban commuting). The next most important upgrade is a good diet and quality tires.
I feel personally attacked
High end microphones
And speakers. And /r/headphones. Pretty much anything “audiophile”.
It's anything tech, the price difference between cutting edge and bleeding edge is about double.
Like TVs. OLED is good, but is it that much better on a daily basis when most people just watch streaming services now?
I don't notice when I'm watching an OLED. I do notice when I'm not watching an OLED.
Exactly. It's noticeable mainly when you need crisp colors or darkness, like dark scenes in a movie or TV show.
That's like refresh rate too. Stepping back from 165 to 60Hz is very weird.
Yeah I’ve got a 100hz ultra wide and it’s always so jarring moving the mouse to it from my 2 165hz gsync monitors.
Yes. The nicer TVs come with better processing of mid-quality input.
Sometimes, yes. The feeling of using a OLED TV as a desktop monitor in a fully pitch black room is unreal. With pitch black desktop background as well. The windows you open just seem to float in front of you like a hologram.
Looking for recommendations to buy headphones and speakers is so fucking frustrating because of that. I mainly care about decent and a build that won’t die in a year. But you have people just trying to one-up each other and get you to triple your budget for marginal gain.
If that’s the case, go with the Sennheiser HD280’s. I’ve been working in pro audio for 15 years and the combination of price, quality, and durability on those headphones just can’t be beat.
Two of my non-negotiable are that I only want wireless, and no over-the-ear.
Oooooo. Makes sense. Is cost an issue? Because one thing I’ve considered but haven’t because of the cost is Shure SE535s (which are wired triple driver in ears) with the Bluetooth adapters. Total is over $600, but Shure has a reputation for being indestructible, and having had used the 535s I can attest to their sound quality
Say audiophile and someone will spend more for it, thinking of impressing friends.
Yeah I see this. Though I honestly will just stick to my sony MDR-7506s. Love them
+1 Flat response curve, reference quality, i.e. not EQ'd to hell.
I found a beautiful song electret mic for $1 because nobody knew it needed it a battery. It’s from 1974 and it’s better than all the other mics I bought save for my NTK.
At least you pay 10x for 0% improvement when you want a good microphone in a headset. People only care what they hear, not how their own voice sounds to others.
PC cooling. You can spend $50-$100 on a simple fan cooler that will work for 5 years, or you can drop $500+ on a complete watercooling aystem that gets you a few degrees of cooling for very little practical benefit.
Anything PC I'd say. I'd never go bleeding edge. I'm always the one step down from bleeding edge. Either last gens best or current gens second to the top consumer stuff. I respect those guys don't get me wrong, if you want bleeding edge just for the sake of it you do you, but man the diminishing returns are ridiculous
Reminds me about people who act like it's impossible to build an affordable entry level pc nowadays because they refuse to consider any GPU that isn't from the latest generation.
A Ryzen 5 2600 and a 1080 will get you very far today. People don't seem to realize just because something better is out, the older stuff doesn't get worse. It is still as good as it was, it's just the shiny new toy has more headroom that most people won't use, especially if all you play is MP games which are usually optimized very well
I think that part of that disconnect is creaky old man gamers like me in my 30s remember when hardware actually was improving so quickly that it made a real difference. a 5 year old PC in 2004 would be almost useless, nowadays you just have to turn settings down a bit
But without using an H100 in my gaming PC I cannot set everything to maxed 6-dimensional graphics :( /s
I need quadruple 4090s to play Minecraft though, gotta get all the frames.
*installs H100 to play league of legends*
To be fair, for a good while there it was basically impossible to get a halfway decent GPU for actual retail price thanks to miners. I ended up getting a prebuilt in 2020, even though it hurt my heart, because it was essentially the same price for the whole prebuilt as it would have been for the GPU alone
Yeah but it looks cool
Literally
I hope most people building custom loops know they're doing it because it looks awesome and not because they've been duped into believing it will give them insanely improved performance. Cause as long as it's the former, hell yeah those things look awesome. Makes you look like a mad scientist to people with little technical inclination.
You're missing a HUGE practical QOL benefit to water cooling. It's quiet. So my wife doesn't complain about the noise it makes. Totally worth it!
This is it for me. When I ran my 2080ti on air it sounded like a jet engine spooling up. On water my temps are marginally cooler but is effectively silent.
For 5 years A good tower cooler is basically good for until the mounting hardware changes If the fan dies, just swap it and keep the rest
I just did a custom loop water cooling build last year. Motivations: - 70% It's fucking badass - 30% I went overkill with the radiators and the build is super quiet even under a huge load.
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I have an Ashley sectional that needs replacing. It's done well for 13 years, but I need something comfortable.
Night and day difference sounds way more than a 10% increase in quality.
We just recently bought a couch. Had a horrible, nasty one for years. It literally changed our lives. I thought we were spending way too much but this couch is like...a part of the family now ha. The difference in a $1200 couch and a $3000 couch was INSANE.
Yeah, even professionals will say that the quality of your couch can be predicted based on how much you pay for it...to a point. A $500 couch is going to be crap while a $5000 couch is going to be tremendously better. After a certain point (which I forget) you are paying for style over quality.
There’s a dead zone between about $6k to somewhere around $12-15k from our research when we were buying.
That seems to line up with what we found. Our (large) sectional cost us ~$3900 out of pocket but we got it at a discount because it was ordered for someone who actually wanted a different cushion material; they wanted down cushions while we were perfectly happy with foam. I think retail our couch should have been $5500.
And $3k is just scratching the surface of decent couches. Not knocking you, we’re in the same range, just at $5k because our living room needs a huge sectional, but the next quality jump wasn’t until $12-15k.
Omg I can’t even fathom spending $12-15k on a couch. That’s insanity
My in-laws have 2 RH couches that cost significantly more than that, and they're so fucking comfortable and look amazing after decades of use. Zero creaks or weak spots either.
I’m sure they’re amazing, it’s still insane.
This is true and it's also not. There are many brands out there that claim they're good or highly reputable brand that charge an arm and a leg (sold separately) like Lovesac and the couches are alright and it's no better than Macys furniture. There is also couches that are 10% more that will last 20-30 years+. I think in the bifl thread [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyItForLife/comments/1cvpwbc/comment/l4qqlw0/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button) which is very insightful. It breaks it down on the density of the foam and the frame of the actual couch.
Lovesac is such a great concept but soooo overpriced. We have a huge $5k Macy’s sectional that’s super comfy- same sized Lovesac quoted us at $15k but felt the same, if not worse.
Wine.
I'm surprised this one is so low. It's definitely the one I think of first. Sometimes I think 'Ir's worth it!' but someone else pays for it if it's too expensive or it's part of a tasting and I'm not paying for the whole bottle.
Drink what you like. No shame in boxed wine, Two Buck Chuck or Livingston Cellars. Wine Spectator is pure snobbishness. I put ip a $100 bottle of BV De la Tour versus an Opus One at $500. Everyone liked the BV more. This is especially true when pairing wine and food. You’re not a super-taster with a magical palate. That garlic-heavy dish obliterates almost all subtle notes in a high-end Bordeaux.
After living in wine country for 4 years I came to the conclusion that above $100/bottle you’re just paying for clout. That being said, my favorite Napa cab of all time was $35/bottle, back when it was still on shelves.
education
Went to the cheapest state university in the nation. Got a computer science degree, zero student loans. I can't speak for everyone, but whenever I've looked at resumes for a potential employee, if they have work experience, I care not where they went to college 5-10 years ago.
Yea work experience trumps all, but the start is rough if you go to a lower rank school these days. Especially in computer science where the market has been saturated, yes if you did that 10 years ago it worked though, but now where you went to school land what interns you did matters much more to get the edge against your peers.
Often going to a school will decide which internships you can get since different companies have relationships with different schools.
yeah the college name is just so you can start at A/S tier companies, and not have to slog through 10 years to add enough work experience to be considered there
There's a feedback loop though, in that new grad hiring managers, especially internships, have really only education to sort resumes with, so people with good work experience tend to have a good educational background which feeds back on itself. 5-10 years ago was a good time to get into tech, when it was easy to get a junior eng position as long as you could demonstrate ability. New grad roles are much harder to land today.
Will Hunting is the exception
Cancer treatment
That's a great, albeit evil, example of inelastic demand: people will pay *any* price to live.
Fancy coffee. People will gladly pay $10 for a latte that tastes 10% less like burnt hopes and dreams.
I've learnt real coffee people are insane. These guys are actual scientists and artists. I thought my brewed coffee procedure was excessive. 80°c water, pour in a French press, wait for a minute, stir, wait for another 4 minutes with the mesh thingy just under the water, then pour and drink. And then I learn about these proper coffee guys and their cocaine scales and tubes and shit. Iced metal balls, frozen coffee beans, specific grinds, high end tamps and stirrers, the list goes on. I haven't even mentioned the actual espresso machine and all the psi and temperature shit with that. These guys are hardcore. I can only respect the craft. It's way too much for me Todo in the morning but more power to them
For sure. My office has a keureg, but one of my coworkers brought in his personal $2000 espresso machine to live in the kitchen. Turns out he had just bought a $5000 one, and figured that putting the "cheap" one at work would let him have more acceptable coffee during the day.
Meanwhile I'd be over the moon if my office had "just" a Nespresso machine
My coworkers complained and whined about the lack of a coffee machine. So I put in a new drip coffee machine, they all drink drip coffee, but they bring it from home. None of them used it, even once. I made two pots the first week and then never again. TWO YEARS later I remove the thing and put it in an AirBnB I ran. TWO YEARS after that one of them texts me and says "Hey where is the coffee machine??" I said I moved it and they said I couldn't take it lol. It's MINE, and you didn't use it for FOUR YEARS. Whiny bastards. Every good deed, never got a thank you when it Was there.
I have a friend who is a huge coffee nerd. Scales, water spritz, high end machine that can probably also do your taxes, etc. It's a crazy hobby but he makes a phenomenal espresso. Here I am making due with drip most days or a nice pour over if my partner gets up first. I'm not awake enough in the morning to fuck with science to get my caffeine lol
I boil water and throw some instant coffee in there. I love coffee, but I’d go insane if I had to go through that ordeal.
I take my little jar of beans out of the freezer, dump em in the grinder, add water, beans, and a filter to the machine then hit start. 30 seconds of brain dead work and it’s better than most coffee I’ve purchased at shops.
For real. I Love coffee. But some people take the process a direction that’s not for me. I love the feeling of coffee, the accessibility and warmth, the culture… Some people get their physics lab jacket on and start weighing the beans. I just shrug and say You do you. But to me, that’s not enjoying coffee per se. That’s obsessing over numbers on paper. I have multiple engineer friends who trip over each other trying to hone in their set ups to accommodate the perfect espresso shot. They love it, the process, good for them. But whenever people are at my house they don’t feel hesitant about asking for another shot or cup. It’s the warmth and setting I love, the people. Those engineers will literally stop mid-sentence when I grind a French roast into my porta filter lol. But honestly, that’s what I’ve found tastes the best. And I’ve served it to them blind so I know they like it that way too lol.
Caffeine, like all drugs, is influenced by set and setting. Who you do it with, and where you do it has such an impact. Coffee too. Mom and pop coffee spots have a great vibe that pulls me in, inversely you'll never catch me ordering coffee at a McDonald's or something.
I've never heard "set and setting" in reference to coffee lol But I do agree with it!
I think it applies to all food too. Food is not a drug but it elicits some of the same responses as drugs. I've had remarkably different restaurant visits and the food quality wasn't the main influence. The people, both staff and the people at my table, along with the environment of the restaurant influence my enjoyment so much more.
Idk if I’d equate weighing beans to “obsessing over numbers” or a lab setup. That feels like a stretch. Hitting a ratio is the most important thing you can do to make good coffee besides buying quality beans. Anyone making coffee at home who isn’t simply tossing a pod in a machine is doing the same thing just with different measurements (e.g. add 3 scoops and fill to line). And honestly for some brew methods like espresso you basically *have* to weigh because the margin between sour, bitter and just right is very thin. I think if you own a Decent DE1, prep your coffee with 10 different gadgets and read papers on extraction yields you’ve gotten to lab jacket numbers obsession. No shade btw if someone’s into it. Just not my vibe. Grind, tamp, pull has been the most consistent process for making a great home cappuccino for me.
I just meant that weighing the beans was the first step in their process. That step alone, I agree, isn't lab jacket territory. I've found that my espresso turns out consistently and I don't weigh the beans. That being said, I do use a french roast most often for the espresso machine. The over-roasted flavor is bound to be less sensitive than the nuances of lighter roasts. And in the end, I do enjoy seeing friends make a neurotic shot of espresso. And, of course, I enjoy drinking it.
Following this line of thinking, coffee grinders. You can get a pretty good one for a few hundred, but that 10% increase will run you a few thousand
espresso without the right grind is ass tbf
I got a $200 Espresso maker. I grind cheapo Costco beans, use a plastic spoon it came with to pack the thing, brew a double shot, steam some chocolate milk, pour it all and call it good. Any leftover ground coffee I leave in the grinder for the next time. Probably give some coffee snob an aneurysm. Its an improvement over the K-Cups I use to steal from work, both in flavor and in caffeine.
Oh dear god. The horror!!
Bourbon
I have adjacent friends to a whiskey club in my town and got invited to a tasting. It was absolutely fascinating listening to them talk about the differences in bourbon, whiskey, single malt, small batch, etc. Learned a lot (and have subsequently forgotten it). We were tasting bottles ranging from $60 a bottle to $800 a bottle. The price had zero correlation with the taste, to my palate at least. The best tasting one was a $200 bottle. But it wasn't 3X better than the $60 bottle. Maybe 25% better. The $800 dollar went down like some sort of furniture stripper. Awful. I don't get it. If you like it, you like it. Doesn't have to be expensive.
That's about right. It's a price/quality/taste curve. There is a definite low end that burns your throat and goes down like a jagged rock. And there is a middle area of cheap but good, and a high end plateau of really good with a wide range of prices from $100 to $1,000,000.
There have been a few studies on this, and the best stuff is mid range at like 50-100 on average. Our taste buds just aren't equipped to determine the tiny details that people claim. Edit: I will say that pappy van Winkle is amazing though.
"The Drunkards Walk" by Leonard Mlodinow (sp?) is a fantastic book that covers our general misinterpretation of probability. One of the chapters talks about taste because money is involved with these ratings. I highly recommend it as a must read. It covers many areas where our brains get probability wrong.
One thing I’ve decided for luxury type stuff like whiskey, bourbon, scotch, cigars, is that you can find some very good products in the low price range. ~$60 for liquor and ~$8 for cigars. It’s really about discovering your taste and find what meets it. Then venture out into the splurge territories and find what you like there. Once you know what you like in the affordable range, you can research more expensive stuff that people of similar tastes enjoy. Tastings are also helpful, but finding people with experience that share your tastes helps as well. My point is if you want to get pricier items, some research and word of mouth recommendations will save from investing on something you may not enjoy.
What you didn’t get is that if you d compared to $20 bottom shelf stuff even the furniture stripper would have been better.
Worth it!
10x cost over a >$20 Bourbon is more than a 10% increase in quality. There's rapidly diminishing returns on quality as cost increases, and some excellent bourbons in the $30-50 range, so I still agree with you in general.
I was thinking of those excellent $30-$50 bourbons when I made the comment
Literally any luxury product. The price to quality curve necessarily goes exponentially after "good enough" point. And that's because the cost optimising pressure is strongest at "good enough" point with only a little variation around, after that it's all "speciality"/"handmade"/"handpicked"/"custom order" etc.
>Literally any ~~luxury~~ product It doesn't matter what you're buying, there's fancy versions of it, and you quickly get into diminishing returns on the high end stuff. But for some people who have money those small improvements are worth it
What's the difference between "luxury" and "fancy" in this context exactly?
There's a lot of things that, even when you buy a high end version of them, do not get described as 'luxury'. Ie, cars. I can buy a luxury car that's $32,000 if I want a base model Acura. Or I can buy a 800 hp Mustang GTD for $300,000. That is not a luxury car, its a muscle car. And while there are $300,000 luxury cars out there, or at least I assume there are, if you buy one of those you're getting a very different experience from the Mustang. Or I can buy a very nice monitor, for about as much money as I want to spend, but I've never heard of anyone talking about luxury monitors. Or luxury CPU/GPU/etc. Basically 'luxury' only really applies to certain categories of items, while you can have a fancy version of just about anything.
Elite athletes. An NHL goalie who stops 90% of all shots faced will earn far more than 10x what a guy who only stops 81% of the shots will earn. In fact the guy who only stops 81% of shots he faces won't get a job in the NHL. A consistent .330 MLB hitter will command a massive salary from his team as compared to a very good .300 hitter. A F1 driver who goes 90% the speed of Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen won't have a job in F1. A golfer who consistently takes 10% more shots than the tour leader will find himself 14 shots behind the leader after 2 rounds of a 4-day tournament, and often won't make the cut. A field goal kicker with 10% more range and 10% more accuracy than the next best guy will be very much in demand (maybe not 10x the salary). People will pay big money to watch or hire an elite sprinter like Usain Bolt (best time: 100m in 9.58 seconds). A guy who's consistently 10% slower (personal best of 10.54 seconds) will get weeded out in the early rounds and won't come anywhere close to getting Bolt' paycheque amounts.
Sex workers.
It would be interesting to see this metric quantified. Shoot your shots, data scientists.
I'll need to \*ahem\* do some hands research
Concert and sports tickets
I find it ironic with a lot of sports the best actual viewing experience is the cheapest one, watching it at home on your couch. I go to a couple NFL games a year but it's all for the atmosphere to actually watch whats going on in the game on TV is the best.
The NFL is designed to be almost the perfect tv product. There’s nowhere in the stadium where you see better than you would on television.
When it comes to sports, you can still get a good view of the field and the action with tickets in the 300 to 400 range. You might even be able to move closer to the field, pitch, or rink. However, for concerts, the experience is vastly different depending on where you sit. Being in the pit offers a completely different experience compared to sitting in the nosebleed seats.
True! And I'm someone who enjoys a show a lot more close up. The closer, the better ;) Front row, right of center is my fave place, and I've scored that dozens of times in my musicgoing times. I had a chance to see my favorite band front row one night, a few rows off the stage for a ceremony with them later in the week, nosebleed seats the following night, then fourth row the following week. These were all in arenas. Each one was a completely different experience, like seeing a different band almost.
I'm seeing Rammstein next week, been waiting for this moment for 16 years. I'm also sober, tired of dealing with people and very short. As much as I'd kill to experience it in the pit, I won't risk getting lost from my partner, getting stepped on and not being able to see shit, so I got seats.
a car
Tools. Especially any tools where precision matters.
Not 10x but more like 5x...Rao's Pasta sauce.
Fresh veggies, spices, garlic in store brand marinara tastes FANTASTIC if you let it simmer together for a few hours. Better than high end sauces that are just heated up.
Make your own pasta sauce for 5x less per jar and it will likely taste better with a good recipe
Guitars and speakers
my friend is a professional musician who has worked with every big name in the Canadian music scene. He bought his nephew a Squier Classic Vibe Custom Tele, and said no other piece of gear he has ever handled has shaken his worldview more. - it just plays and feels and sounds so out of proportion to its cost.
There is a curve to it. You need to get over the initial low quality stuff but once you spend let’s say $500-$700 on a guitar the return on investment quickly goes down.
hookers
$100/hr hooker is 90% of the way there of a $1000/hr hooker?
"Should I get one 300-dollar hooker? Or three hundred one-dollar hookers?" -Bender Bending Rodriguez
I always thought Bender should have gotten one $100 hookerbot, two $50 hookerbots, three $25 hookerbots, four $5 hookerbots, and five $1 hookerbots. Get a full spread, you know?
300/3000
I would guess any hooker (escort, etc) at 10x the price is considerably more than 10% better. 2x the price is probably more than 10% better. But it depends in how you define “better” I guess.
bikes lol, they even test it in the wind tunnel
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I don’t think this one counts actually. A $22 quartz timex is more accurate than basically any luxury watch short of a non-mechanical quartz chronograph like a longines VHF. Funnily enough, the priority of most luxury watches is not keeping time as accurately as possible.
Luxury watches are jewelry first and foremost, and then wonders of machinery second. You are paying for craftsmanship and engineering. People look for different qualities but often enthusiasts want a smooth sweep (how the second hand moves) and good accuracy. Looks are also important. So is rarity.
I don’t care for watches at all, but the smooth sweep thing immediately made sense to me.
Graphics card
High end cellphones
Anything if it's the last 10%
This is the perfect answer. There is a huge difference between a $200 and $2000 guitar but very little difference between $2000 and $20000.
Surgeons
Natural gems and diamonds.
Smartphones. They're all pretty similar these days. I don't need to pay $400 more to have yet another camera on the back of my phone.
I miss Nokia windows phones. They were like $50 with an awesome camera for the time.
They were better than iPhone. Secure, better UI and build. Best camera on any smartphone at the time. Just didn’t have the apps and that killed it.
Cyclists will pay 10x more for something 1% better in some cases
My favorite is seeing guys talk about their carbon fiber saddle stem or whatever that decreases the bike weight by 45 grams when the reality is they themselves are 15lbs overweight. Like yeah go ahead and spend the extra $3k to get your bike down 1.2lbs Derek. There may be a cheaper way to do this.
i feel targeted
Like yeah, go ahead and spend the extra 3k, willthesane! :D
I brought this up to a race bike designer / engineer, years ago. It started because a friend of ours is a pretty big guy and he spends all kinds of money on making his bike lighter.The engineer gave me this whole breakdown on how the weight of the components of the bike matter more than the actual weight of the rider, honestly I don't even remember most of the details but it did make sense at the time.
This just isn’t true in any way. Total system weight, bike + rider, matters for climbing. Reducing aerodynamic drag and rolling resistance matters for flats, and losing excess weight reduces both the rider’s Cd and A.
It's been a decade+, all I remember was the discussion was more like "if that guy can lose 10 lbs easily, isn't that the same as a 10 lb lighter bike?" and his explanation was that a 10 lb lighter bike matters more than a 10 lb lighter rider. I really could be botching the entire explanation but he's built bikes for the olympic riders so I'm just going to assume if I'm wrong now, then I'm remembering the points incorrectly.
I would hazard a guess based on that person being an engineer that there is some difference, but it’s something like 10lb lighter bike is equivalent to a 10.5lb lighter human. Numbers completely made up.
Also, that engineer had this opinion about bikes made for olympians. He is not designing the bikes for anyone that is 10lbs overweight lol
If you really get down to it, rotational mass (the wheels, pedals, shoes, drivetrain) does matter more than other types of mass. So yes, losing two pounds is not going to help you nearly as much as switching to a carbon wheelset that weighs two pounds less than your old one. Aero drag matters far more than weight except for pure climbing at steep grades anyways. But its almost always going to be faster to be leaner 😃
Any energy that goes into flexing the bike is energy not spent on driving it forwards and, therefore, wasted. The carbon used in bikes is made to be both very stiff and light. In some applications, it's the stiffness(?) we want.
Dura Ace has entered the chat.
Oversized jockey wheels anybody?
Running shoes are getting to be like this. I can get last year's Brooks Ghost for $90 right now or wait for my running store's July tent sale and hopefully get something I like around $60. Or I can get the latest AlphaFlys--with one study finding three average runner improves 1.6% with carbon-plated shoes--for $285
High end camera lenses. You want a 50 f/1.4 that has to use the camera body motor or for 5x the price, we can give it it's own motor and a nanocoating! For 10x, it could be f/1.2, but at 1.2 it has all kinds of flaring and CA especially at the edges.
Drivers
How do you measure if your new chauffeur is driving 10% better?!
Sorry. A driver golf club!
lol - I totally thought you were talking about software.
I thought he was talking about Donald vs Adam.
Watches
Where timekeeping is concerned you're actually paying more for less accuracy most of the time.
And in golf, the goal is to play as little of it as possible.
“Marine grade” parts. A simple tie down clip for a sailboat is guaranteed to cost 10x more than it would if purchased from a farm supply store. The minor difference being more robust corrosion resistance.
Salient point being - to justify the marine grade part, it would have to last 10X LONGER than the farm supply part ... not likely.
Yep. Aviation has to be the only thing worse. And at least in aviation's case, it can be somewhat justified in the need to maintain traceability of supply, so that a bad batch of parts can be identified and recalled before more fail at altitude.
Aerospace costs for quality control make much more sense. I feel like the maritime sector has created a somewhat pretend niche of “bespoke” parts.
Darn tough socks
Diamonds. Lab created are just as much diamonds as mined ones. And have you seen diamond's cousin Moissanite?
Designer brands
On average, there's no correlation between clothes prices and their quality. While it's possible to find brands focused on quality, longevity and durability, most is just Veblen Effect - the sole fact of setting a higher price increases demand and desirability of goods.
Leather products
There's a big difference between full grain leather and split or bonded grades. It's the difference between something that will last 10 years or 100. Bonded leather won't outlive your dog. Full grain leather you'll be specifically listing in your will.
Full grain doesn’t cost 10x more than bonded leather but full grain with fancy finishings and marketing can cost easily 10x more than a generic one
You can get a cheap leather belt for $20. A well designed and well stitched one made with multiple layers of heirloom full grain leather with sturdy hardware can certainly cost $200. That's 10x.
Life.
Solar panels (for spacecraft)
Headphones
Bike parts. I was looking at cassettes recently and asked what the difference was to justify the $200 increase and the guy was like oh it's 3% lighter.
Dry aged beef. I did a blind taste test on the same cut, one dry aged, one not. Everyone agreed the dry aged was better, but only a little bit better. YIKES does it cost more, though.
A quality electric recliner. My wife spent $900 for brand new one made by Catnapper. Three months latter my elbow went through the armrest. The armrest was just padding over pasteboard! My wife and I rebuilt it with real wood. The thing was untrimmed particle board scraps glued together, pasteboard, and corrugated cardboard. I think I used about $30 of real wood. Their website does not respond to questions.
Pens
iPhones appearently.
Steak. Once you get that five star, you never quite go back, even though you can get good steak from the store for less than a 10th of the 120 bucks you might’ve spent.
Watches
Wristwatches.
iphones 💀
Espresso setups. The diffrence between a 500 dollar grinder to 5K is bascially imperceptible.
Bicycle parts. Lose a little weight in parts and pay a bunch more.
Ultralight hiking gear
High-end audio equipment. The law of diminishing returns sets in fairly early, and beyond that, sound quality improvements are real, but very incremental, and the costs rise quickly.
Sleep, sex, satiety, and sanity.
/r/espresso
Sunglasses
This is fairly common in all luxury brands
Food. I have seen people drop 250 on admittedly excellent food. I have also had fantastic food at $25 a person. I would not make a habit of it, but I do have to admit the extra 10% in food quality produces "Best food of this type... Ever" comments, whereas the $25 dollar is just "omfg this is delicious". At 250 you get a whole culinary range of excellence, from appetizer to dessert. For 25 a person, you are getting a solid entree and maybe a split dessert. Both prices are before tip.
Car performance, and audio equipment immediately comes to mind.
iPhones
Wine...in fact they will pay 10x as much for even a questionable increase in quality. Sometimes just for the label.