I will try to get more specifics but my advice is to follow either artists on Instagram or the heady shops, for instance I can easily score a greenbelt glass bubbler for much less then the keith herring rigs, I mean I got a heady dirkdigglar ( on a flash deal though ) for the same listed price as that Keith bubbler.
Oh okay, yeah that's still a more expensive than most of what is shared here though, and what people are usually looking for here, those Keith Herring rigs were not a typical share for this thread at all... There is a separate heady glass thread though too!
The problem is most of the shops have terrible websites and artists will often just randomly post a solid rig for cheap and sell through dms so it’s hard to link what I’m seeing right now. One guy I plan on getting a piece from is fluid
https://fluidglass.store/ These are a little beyond the price but again like a small tube from fluid in on par with some calibear rigs and I’d go fluid all day.
Oh yeah I would say these are definitely on par with CaliBear if not better, Greek Glass too, this seems more like GooRoo and Licit Glass style/pricing... Not like the typical China fair from DHgate that is shared here most often?
This one looks awesome but it is not cheap to me at all, though likely a very fair price:
True for sure which is why I also might be jaded seeing sale prices pop up but for example a pulsar stemline is 140usd on aqualabs ( also a solid site to check random glass) and a fluid is 200$ range and you can get him to customize the size and such on request, to me that’s worth the difference but I also understand, or someone like sealettuce is cheaper even.
That is awesome that fluid can customize, I'll have to look up sea lettuce... Yeah the only Instagram blower I've really been following for the good prices was Jeremy of Smokey Mountain Glass where I got my heady whale from and he is not local to me at all lol Most of the cool stuff I see on IG, local or not, is super heady beautiful but also super crazy expensive!
Haven't checked out aqua labs in a long time, got a bent glass mouthpiece from them once, but yeah I don't consider $140 to be cheap generally, though it could be a good price for glass, but I would want a sale of course lol
The reason I started leaning this way was more with how crazy biao prices jumped up and how much people started dropping on his customs vs checking some of these guys. For example a mastahglass single uptake is the same price as some custom biaos rbrs. I love this thread btw and I’m a crafts maker too (furniture) hence my bias likely to searching local makers
but I have a hearty import collection too.
Yeah but Biao is certainly on the upper end of cost and workmanship, like CaliBear/CCG, also the wait to get one of his pieces from China is super long, but I did get a great deal on my large bent neck I think, even though it's not an ideal piece per se... Yeah he charges a lot for his fancy custom RBR type things, I would not call those cheap at all, so if you can find something similar for a similar price locally, yeah I don't know why anyone wouldn't want to do that if they were in the market for a piece like that... I was able to go much cheaper for my own little RBR from fashion glass, who also do nice work and are not necessarily cheap?
I definitely have that bias as well and I am really glad I have found a few small time workers to make me some nice heady pieces in the past year or two, the imports are part of the collection for practicality, yeah GooRoo also really change the collection and now TAG which I can't believe I ignored for so long lol even though that is still imports...
This is a terrible screenshot but this is cheaper for me to get then a basic grav or mjarsenal brand rig hopefully that shows what I mean a bit more clearly, edit again those are greenbelt glass.
Yeah I think Grav are overpriced and mostly unappealing for me, MJA I actually know someone whose brother is one of the owners, they are good people and seem like unique little products that they make of good quality and effectiveness...?
I do not consider those in the same league as a lot of the stuff we share here though, like what I buy from DGCglass, RadiantGlass, SmokingBong, Glass99, Lumin88/Yingmin5, are all much much cheaper and can be really good quality, although the types of pieces are all going to be different, but like just pointing out that difference... This is the cheap glass thread, which is certainly a relative term, all around!