"Low-End" Metals vs "High-End" Metals

So my most expensive yoyo is currently a YYJ Theory (which I got 15% off of), and I think it plays really well. My question to y’all who have “high-end” metals (around $80 or more) is this: how do “low-end” metals (around $60 or less) compare to “high-end” metals? I ask this because I want to know whether or not I should start buying “high-end” throws or just stick around my comfy $60-ish price limit.

I guess it all depends on where you draw the line on low vs. high end. Personally I think $85 to $90 to be a budget to mid price yo-yo and high end starts in the triple digits. $60 limits the field quite a bit. The best way to figure out if you should look at expanding your price limit is to actually play them. Find a local yo-yo club or go to a contest and see if you can try out some that intrigue you but are higher priced than what you normally look at.

-Chris

I feel that a lot of throws in the $60 range play just as well as these “high end” throws you describe. However, many times, these more expensive yoyos undergo extremely rigorous quality control tests (which is not to say less expensive yoyos don’t), and the guys who own these companies (think CLYW or General Yo) only accept the best of the best. General Yo B Grades and CLYW Fools Gold would be premium runs for many other companies. Also, you tend to see quirkier, more outlandish shapes and weight distributions on high end throws (like X Cube). In addition, there seems to be a certain luster around expensive yoyos, but maybe that’s just me. I feel that a lot of times, the high end throws are surrounded by hype, which helps boost the reputation of the throw. I usually just buy what I want though.

For me, it’s all about performance, coupled with preferences.

Depending on the yoyo’s design, there are some amazing “budget friendly” $60 and less yoyos out there that will blow your mind. “How can something so good play so great?” A great brand that I find this hold true for is RecRev, although their price tag tends to hover from the $50-75 range.

Then again, I’m routinely buying “high end” stuff. A recent purchase was a Sleipnir, which I’ve had for over 2 weeks now and still haven’t taken the time to string it up and throw it, along with a few others. Then again, I’m not too good for “low cost” items. I had to have a Surge when they came out, and I love the Classic. I might go ahead and pick up a Theory soon because it is on my wants list anyways.

There’s also nothing wrong with B-grade items, provided you know what you’re getting in to. YYF’s B-grades are sold at contests for anywhere from $40-50 and if you don’t mind some ano flaws, well, you’re getting an amazing yoyo at a discount. General Yo does insane discounts on their B-grades. A friend had to borrow $30 from me to get a B grade Essence. Yes, I say “had to”. I agree that for $30, there was NO WAY I was letting him overlook that deal. CLYW’s Fools Golds are nothing short of amazing at half the price of their regulars. Seriously, if you don’t have to spend the money, or you can find a way to spend less, why pay full pop?

As much as I like YYE, I do shop around, going with where I can get stuff the least expensive. Still, over half my purchases are from here. Why? I can’t buy it if other places don’t carry it.

In the end, if you can justify the costs AND you enjoy it, who cares if you’re playing a top dollar yoyo or something more budget friendly. Are you happy with what you’ve got? If the answer is “yes”, then the rest doesn’t matter.

However, should we ever cross paths, it is your objective to go through my cases to try my stuff, regardless of the price of the item so you can see for yourself if there really is a difference. I bet you’ll enjoy my RecRev Freq.Wav equally as my CLYW Chief, and with the Freq.Wav being half the cost, you’ll probably have that “mind blown” experience I was telling you about.

The theory will do everything you need it to. And around the $60 range, there’s plenty other throws that will too. Capless, dibase, dm2, god tricks, and a lot of others. High end throws will only make what you do easier, but stuff in your price range can and will do everything you need it to, the high ends are just for extra help. And if you want a high end, you can find great deals on the BST. I once got a Severe 2010, Pacquio, Y Factor, and dm for $120!

I think that I will start looking for these “B-Grade” items. Especially the Fool’s Gold stuff. Where do you buy “B-Grade” items?

Are you going to WYYC this year? I am going. I see that your name is Chris Pickett…maybe I will kinda hunt you and your collection down, LOL. I am very glad that you are so generous with your collection. I hope I can find you if you are coming!

Well, sometimes General Yo and CLYW release their Fools Gold/B Grade to YYE, but you can find a bunch of these throws on the BST. It’s kind of hard to get these throws from YYE, seeing that they’re in such high demand, a lot of times, they sell out minutes after the countdown clock ticks to 0, and they are released to the store. I know of a certain store where you will be able to easily find Fools Gold and regular CLYWs, but I’m not sure if I can mention it, so PM me if you want details.

EDIT: Never mind, he’s not. And I Chris already mentioned the store in his post below mine, so look there.

I will not be going to WYYC. I can’t find anyone who can watch my kids. My wife works as well, but during the day, she’s at work, and none of my in-laws can help out. That’s why I can’t go. So, don’t look for me. If you see someone else wearing Studio42 shirts, it will be a friend of mine.

So, if you intend to hunt me down, I’m in the Sacramento, California area. If you’re nearby, let me know and swing by.

B-Grades:
General Yo seems to sell these at contests.
YoYoFactory apparently ONLY sells these at contests.
CLYW sells B-grades via their web site and they did sell them at CalStates.

Other options:
RecRev sells their stuff for stupid-cheap at contests. I got a Silly Goose, Sine//saw and an Octave for $120: $40 each. This isn’t B-grade, this is their A-grade/top shelf/cream of the crop/best of the best stuff. I really like the RecRev products I have, and their price is far below what they should be selling for, even in the stores.

Are you still going to take a break from the yoyoing world after WYYC (I seem to remember reading this somewhere)?

No. You mis-understood.

Leaving the forum. July 1 2013

Not quitting yoyo’ing. Might, but not yet.

No! You can’t! I understand, though that there is probably some personal stuff behind it, so good luck in your next venture. Are you de-activating your account or just taking a break? Do you have plans to come back?

Thanks from everyone here for your time.

I’m not deleting or de-activating my account so I have the option, but I probably won’t be back.

But we’re distracting from the thread.

Back on topic:

I’m not sure if I stated it, or if it even matters

I feel people should only look at price as an issue in regards to facilitating(or not) commerce. Of course, I suppose that’s easy for me to say, especially when people see what I’ve managed to get.

Really, all that matters is two things, and one is more critical than the other. Those two things are performance and then preferences. It’s up to the company to make the yoyo to be able to have the performance. It’s up to the player to take advantage of those performance characteristics. Of course, yoyo players will often exceed what the company had in mind with the yoyo’s design. Well, not me, but that’s a different issue. However, regardless of a player’s capability and the yoyo’s performance aspects, it all comes down to preferences. If a player isn’t enjoying the yoyo or doesn’t like or, or the yoyo and the player just don’t work well together, the price of the yoyo is irrelevant.

Taking things to extremes:
Yes, the Anglam. $289 of awesome. Or is it? For me it is. This is a yoyo that for me works very well. I’m a fan of V-shapes and I’ve had amazing compatibility with various Mickey signature yoyos, which extends to the Firmy, Jet Set, Jet Set EC, V, Phenom, Phenomizm, Speeder 2, Speeder and Speed Maker, to name what I have. However, one may easily argue why someone with my mediocre skill set has such a “high end” yoyo, other than “a fool and his money are soon parted”? Well, there’s a darn good argument. However, I will say I was sent the yoyo with NO obligation with every opportunity to return it. Within the first few hours, I knew this yoyo wasn’t going back and I paid for it.

For my skill set, maybe a Classic with upgrades is more befitting of my skillset. $20 or less and I’m a content person. Does everything I need. Certainly is on the low end of the price spectrum, but it’s still a great yoyo. I’m even seeing people compete with this little plastic toy.

Then again, toss me a DM2 and I’m a happy guy too. It’s still one of my go-to yoyos. At under $45, we’re still not in that $100+ break-point of “high end”.

I am also finding myself really drawn to RecRev right now. I go in cycles, and sometimes I’ll just be drawn to a particular brand. I just follow these feelings. At no yoyo costing me more than $75, this is certainly every bit “high end”, yet just doesn’t qualify due to pricing. This isn’t the only brand with stuff under $100 that I feel is high end, but it’s a brand that I really like. C3’s “budget-friendly” yoyos are also price busters too. However, as much as I love my CLYW 4th run Chief, you might have a hard time convincing me that the RecRev Freq.Wav isn’t just as good, if not a touch better in my opinion. Key word: OPINION!! And yes, I REALLY like CLYW.

Don’t get me wrong. I do appreciate the “finer” things. I do like expensive yoyos. Most of this past week, I’ve been going back and forth between the Madhouse Compulsion and the GSquared AL7 Albatross, when not working on 2A with a pair of Unleashed or 4A via various off-stings.

At the same time, I’ve also got a lot of stuff by brands considered “low end”, such as God Tricks, Magic YoYo, and other brands. YoYoExpert even carries brands like God Tricks, and I’m sure if this was a truly substandard brand, they wouldn’t be carrying it, yet they do, and I have 3 of their models and I like them. The Bounty Hunter is my favorite, for example. Magic YoYo is a brand I have 12 different models of and I enjoy certain models more than others. Stand-outs are the T5 and N12, which play high-end to me. King Yo Star’s $30 Bossman is an over-sized bunch of fun that I enjoy at all levels. The Kuyo’s YoYo Company Trap, Trap 2013 and Trap XL just are nothing short of pure joy for me to play, and I don’t think any of these cost me more than $35 each. The Trap 2013 is designed for competition, and I feel it’s a worthy competitor.

I feel high end is more of a state of mind. If you are happy with it, then honestly, what difference does it make what it costs? Are you a better player only if you have an expensive yoyo? Do you judge others by the money they’ve spent? Maybe I like to just over-simplify things way too much. If I want it, I buy it. If I like it, then great. If I’m happy with it, it might as well be high end as far as I’m concerned.

Sometimes things have to cost what they cost. Sometimes things are being priced at a certain cost for other reasons. I don’t set prices, but I gotta pay them. That’s not true. I don’t have to pay the prices, but I choose to. Heck, I even picked up a Spin Dynamics after the promotion, partially due to the fact I didn’t have any money until after the promotion ended, so I use the National YoYoDay sale to snarf one up. I hope it lives up to the buzz about it, because I have yet to string that up, as well as quite a few other new arrivals.

I guess we can put a guide for what constitutes high end vs. low end. Honestly, who cares. Unfortunately, not all of us can afford to live the “high end yoyo” lifestyle. Don’t think you “need” or “must have” a $100+ yoyo. If you can, then great. If not, then consider that there’s a growing number of amazing yoyos well under $100. Heck, I’m even thinking of designing my own yoyo, and I want it to be an amazing competition grade yoyo and I want it to cost under $70. I want high end performance to be affordable to most players. However, these players better like V-type shapes because that’s gonna be one of it’s attributes.

I completely realize you want us to keep the thread on track and everything but this makes me really sad to hear. I hope there will still be places where you can still be an active member of the community. Losing a valuable member such as you is a huge loss to the forum and comes as somewhat of a shock to me. You probably don’t want to get into the why’s of why you’re leaving, but it does leave me somewhat curious as to why you would leave, though it’s not my place to know. Very sad to hear.

Sorry for derailing, I really am, but just reading that was horribly sad to me.

I’m a member just like any other. I’m nothing special.

All I will say is it has nothing to do with the forum. I’ll still be doing sound for contests, attending Nationals whether I get the contract or not, running my own yoyo/skill toy group, participating in YoLex and helping a nearby store, and shopping at YYE.

You’ll be back… They always come back :wink:

Anddidnt you make a big announcement saying you were leaving a while back then came backlike a few days later :stuck_out_tongue:

The Theory is an amazing yoyo and plays as well as most yoyos that cost two-to-three times as much as it does. As stated by other replies, there are a number of other yoyos in the price range of the Theory (Capless, DiBase) that play very well at a fraction of the price of many modern throws. If you’re happy with the Theory, I recommend buying a Capless because not only will it add to your collection but it’ll add to your collection at relatively little cost (when compared with $120+ throws).

My guess is that eventually curiosity will get the better of you and you’ll see something you love that costs over $100 and you’ll buy it and you’ll probably love it. It’s very difficult to not enjoy a yoyo that you put that much money into. At least it is in my opinion. Even if I don’t play all of my collection each one has a special place in my heart because I bought each one for an individual specific reason…I just happen to like the play of some more than the play of others or the appearance of some more than the appearance of others.

Don’t feel bad having a Theory be your most expensive throw though. Seriously, I have every One Drop, every CLYW, many YYF, YYJ, C3, General Yo, ILYY…and the Theory is right up there in my favorite yoyos I own. It’s great. YYJ is yet to let me down.

The Duncan Raptor is a very capable yoyo, as Janos Karancz and Tomas Bubak have proved, and it’s just $40.

A while back I made an announcement saying I was leaving and would be back after CalStates. I was gone for approximately 3 months.

I was actually a lot happier while I was gone.

Cost of production and demand on the yoyo are the factors that = cost.
I consider profit part of the cost of production.

Profit should be a factor in determining price points and production costs. However, costs of production are also “marked up”. Everything in the chain has a mark-up.

Someone has to mine the raw materials. If not raw materials, someone has to claim/reclaim raw materials for recycling/re-purposing. This have costs to recover.

Turning raw or reclaimed materials into a product suitable for use has costs, plus the costs to transport it from A to B. This is about where the yoyo industry enters the equation.

Machine time can be fixed based on a number of factors, but a company will say “OK, it costs me X/hour to run this machine… what mark-up do I tack on to that? 2% 5% 15%?”

So on and so forth.

A company is most likely going to start a project with “this is the product we want to produce, and this is the price we want to sell it at”. They run their numbers and see if it’s economically viable. This is where projects can live or die. If their costs are low enough, they might drop the price. If the costs are too high they may choose to raise the price, find ways to lower costs, eat a smaller profit margin, or just abandon the project permanently or temporarily.

Either way, production costs are “hard” costs. Profit is a function of post-production. “It costs X to make something: machining, shipping anodizing, shipping, bearing, response, axle”. Therefore, based on X, we should be making Y(percentage of X) as profit.