Oh I found it 600 GBP or $990 USD.
Put me down for pearljam's hf-2 as the most overpriced Grados

well, the HF-2 were not overpriced for me as I bought them...and I'm glad I did !!

any headphone that i don't like.

When you say "overpriced," you may mean something more than price, such as quality of build or sound. That adds a layer of complexity that the gods of assessment would frown upon as "confounding." When I speak of being "overpriced," I'm speaking of a price that is simply marked way too high for the materials being sold - regardless of the genius in looks, sound or marketing.

On that note, I think every Grado above the SR-325 is "overpriced." Even if you factor in the price of mahogany, a $700 RS-1 is still ridiculously expensive for the materials employed. It gets even more so when you pay $1,000 for the GS-1000 (which uses a little more of that mahogany on the outside but whose space - inside the shell - can't be much, if any, bigger than the space inside the chamber of an RS-1). And if you think an additional $300 for a muffin top is egregious, what can you say about adding $700 to that for aluminum? Is aluminum that expensive? Is there really that much more aluminum inside a PS-1000 than inside a $300 325?

With Grado, you're not paying for materials. You're paying for the right to wear custom headphones from a boutique manufacturer. If you think the Grado family has a Stradivarius-like genius running through their gene pool, you'll pay for the privilege of wearing their top products. But when I look at the graphs or listen to all but the PS-1000 (which I have not heard), I'm skeptical of all this Grado fanboy mysticism.

Don't get me wrong. I think the folks paying $1,800 for a Sennheiser HD800 are also getting stung. They and the Gradoheads have every right to enjoy great sound. In a free market, a manufacturer can demand its price. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. There are lots of good headphones out there. There are even an assortment of great ones. But at some point, we aren't talking about build and labor. We're talking about fashion - though with a twist. We're talking about the joys and pleasures of trying on a top designer's best products. If you paid the same amount of money for a dress, or a great suit, you'd still be stung, but there'd be folks who don't get this who'd at least get that. I still scratch my head when I look at the price difference between cars with similar engines but different styling. Is the engine really worth $10,000 to $40,000 worth of difference in the actual price tag - particularly for a street vehicle whose maximum legal speed is going to be 70 mph? Yes, if you really want that hot, hot car. Will the ride be that different? I'm not so sure.

If you're paying more than a thousand dollars for a headphone, you're paying an awful lot of money for a pair of miniature speakers strapped to your ears. Unless there's a lot of cool bells and whistles, you're getting stung. In my opinion, the top-drawer Grados, Sennheisers, Ultrasone, etc. are overpriced. Don't even get me started on Bose. I speak as someone who loves his GS-1000 and RS-1, but who also loves his modded SR-60 (with open back, dolloped driver and modded cushions).

Haha i liked the the jokes about my HF2's
Well you gotta love all the hypocrite people here.
when i sold my HF2's on ebay there was a huge thread about my "digrace"
now almost EVERYONE on this forum are selling them on ebay used for much more than what they paid for them when they were new, and no one says a word.
and some of those hypocrites are selling them used for much more than what they bought them for on this forum,yeha real saints indeed.
plus there was one guy who sold a USED pair on this forum for close to 900$ and no one said a word.
anyhow,if you consider the customs duties i had to pay,and the express shipping and paypal fees and ebay fees,i LOST money
but it's ok,i know some people are jealous and or stupid.
plus the guy who bought them is a head fier,so i didn't steal from anyone,didn't do any damage to anyone.
besideds if you had any self respect and had problems with me,you would PM me and not lynch me publicly but whatever.

Dude chill out.

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When I compare it to the cost of 'equivalent' speakers, its still a bargain. Phones wont give you everything you can get from speakers, granted, but I also dont need to sit in the 'sweet spot' in an acoustically perfect room to enjoy them.

I agree that everyone in the chain is making a lot of money, particularly distributors in each country, but audio seems to be an area where you can charge outrageous amounts of money and not necessarily deliver a great deal - if Mark Levinson is prepared to go on record saying that some cable manufacturers should go to jail for fraud, then we clearly have a problem. The man isnt shy about pricing his own kit well beyond the average paypacket - I guess it irked him that someone else found a better pricing model

For those who can remember what we paid for good notebook computers ten years ago, and compare that with prices now, we are clearly getting a hell of a lot more for each dollar spent - even here in Oz - why is it the opposite with audio ? The answer, at least in part, has to be that Lenovo dont try to reinvent the CPU, operating system or HDD everytime they put out a new model : they choose a set of parts, give it a model number and their factories churn out a couple of hundred thousand. Audio is a very different industry - even if Marantz and Denon do have the same parent, and they could rebadge their entry-level CDPs (as car makers often do), I doubt that it will ever happen beyond some component sharing. They know that they are selling to a market that is obsessed with the difference between brands - I believe we pay a high price for that obsession.

End of the day, people will pay what they perceive something to be worth - if not, we would all be listening to a pair of MS1s right now, vowing never to spend another penny on a pair of headphones, and we definitely wouldnt be spending thousands on headphone amps that DIYers can build for a fraction of their retail cost.

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You're being extremely aggressive in your response. The comments made about your hf-2 sale in this thread were light hearted and didn't in any way criticize you as a person.
The fact is you started a thread asking what we consider to be the most over-priced headphones and even mentioned that you consider certain Grados to be over-priced. That is so ironic it would be weird not to say something.
Anyways, lighten up. You sold your hf-2 in September for more than double what I paid for them new, shipped to my door, and taxed at the border in October. That is just a fact. Personally I'm not interested in judging you at all. But c'mon it's pretty funny that you started a thread talking about over-priced headphones and Grados in particular.

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So you're saying you payed close to $500 for all of that? Lol, since when does the seller pay the buyer's customs fee's? The reason people were pissed was because they were UNOPENED meaning you did not try them, meaning you bought them to profit off of them. I'm just responding with my opnion on why people were angry, but if you read the thread carefully it was pretty clear.


But imo, any grado other than the igrado or sr60 is overpriced, especially in canada ( a sr325i is over $400 dollars here and a sr125 is $250)

for me, the most over priced headphone is the W5000....I thought it was AWFUL

I am extremely content with my low-range, or mid-level system and have no urge to spend more. There is a peak with headphones, and in my opinion you hit the peak of ridiculousness when you bust the $200 mark. All of my phones, a Grado SR60i, Sennheiser HD420, Koss PortaPro, Bose OE, and Klipsch S4 sound spectacular off of my FiiO/iPod. I've listened to HD800s, upper line Grados, and couldn't justify spending more money on them. The upper Mahogany Grado models and pointless speakers like the HD800 are overkill and unnecessary.

Call it a placebo, but people automatically assume that when they spend +$1000 on a headphone that it will be superior to their SR60i before they buy it. It's a wonderful job of marketing. Say what you will about a brand like Bose and predatory merchandising, but their simple selection of an On-Ear, Over-Ear, and In-Ear is simple. They've hit the peak of their ability and are satisfied with that. If you choose to pay a premium for noise cancelling, well then there's the QC.

The Head-Fi obsession with upgrading is nothing more than paying for higher quality materials and better advertising.

I would never pay more than $200 for a pair of headphones.

i had to pay customs fees becaue they entered my country of course,i didn't pay the seller's customs fees.
and i didn't buy them to make a profit,that's just your interpretation.
i bought them becaue i wanted them and wanted to use them.
but then changed my mind,and wanted a different headphone,i think i am allowed to do that.
and sorry for the aggressiveness but i was lynched in that "disgrace" mega thread,and could not defend myself at all,it's impossible to explain yourself to so many people,and now people are bringing it up again,i mean what's the point other than to hurt me again?
if it was mentioned once in this thread i wouldn't care,but it got mentioned a few time.
i'm not going to write another word about this ever again,to me it belongs to the past.
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Any of the in-production Grado's, especially here in Norway (~2 1/2 times the US prices)..

Heh, I wouldn't even consider Grado if I lived out of the USA. I'd buy Allessandro.

I respect this comment, but am not certain what manufacturing conditions have to do with a headphone being overpriced. The SQ, build, comfort level and customer service are either commensurate with price, or not. For example, the HE-5 is built in China, and by all accounts is nothing short of a fantastic bargain.

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