Jeffblue

I honestly think that its the 'costs more, must be of higher quality' attitude of consumers that causes the insane prices on these wheels. This isn't a matter of comparing a Volk to a Rota, or a BBS to a Linea Corsa. a lot of people on low budgets are willing to sacrifice the quality of the wheel in order to get a better price. IE they get a set of 4 cast wheels, for as much as 1 of the real thing actually costs.

Now what you are referring to is comparing a 3 piece forged wheel to another 3 piece forged wheel. When a company is in any business for a while, they DO earn the right to charge more for a product of the same quality as a newer company, just because they have been around for a long time.

I, personally, don't like spending more money than necessary on something, and i think most consumers feel the same way. However, I think a lot of people get caught up in spending more money than they need to just for the percieved notion of higher quality. Ultimately, the manufacturers, and their labels are happy to play into this, and have no problem charging an extra 1-2 thousand dollars per set so that consumers can feel like they bought something that is of higher quality.

Basically, the wheel companies help to spread the notion that a more expensive wheel is better. Consumers buy into that notion, and would rather spend an extra thousand dollars on company X's wheels because now that they are more expensive than company Y, they must be better. The fact of the matter is, price, does not dictate quality. Ultimately, it comes down to construction (quality of materials like 6061 aluminium, rivets, etc forging process), Cusomization (offsets, widths, sizes, lip, color etc), wait time, customer service, and warranty.

If i can get all of those things to the highest standard, which i did from forged specialties, why would i want to spend an extra 1-2k on HRE or any of these more expensive wheels when i don't need to? If wheel companies want to charge more because their wheels are better, then thats fine, but explain why they are better. The fact that wheel X is more expensive than wheel why, does not mean that its better. You also mentioned value/resale value. All i know is that if i spend 5 grand on wheels and i want to sell them, i'd better hope i can sell them for 3. If i spend 3500 on wheels, i can turn around and sell them for 1500 and take the same loss as the first set. But you'd better believe there's a lot more people willing to spend 1.5-2.5k on used 3 piece wheels than there are people willing to spend 3-4k on used 3 piece wheels.

sorry for rambling, this isn't really meant to be an attack by any means. All im saying is that as a consumer, i dont want to see price as a means of justifying the quality, i want to see the quality justifying the price. I want to see 'our wheels are 1500 more than theirs because of X,Y,Z. NOT our wheels are better than theirs because they are 1500 dollars more.