Nemesis is tier 2 & 69 tier 3? Bummer, I'm not in tier 1! Waaahhh...JK!
I think I see it more like this:
>>>The public experiences a set of tiers forming based on general perceptions of beauty, performance, price, & availability. So that's what the overall market is doing.
>>>A person individually creates his/her own tiers based on personal experience. So this is more subjective. As we go thru our experiences what we regard highly can change.
I'll use an example: Thermovape... a couple years ago that would have been tier 1 for me. Now I've sold one Alpha, and don't really care for the other two I have. So they're off in some other mental tier now that I own a Nemesis & MKB-TS, & a 69 MOD on the way. What tier is my MKB-TS in? For me personally it's tier 1! That's because I worked hard on tuning it up and customizing & so it's personally one of my best MODs & sees more use than my Nemesis. I awarded myself the Nemesis more as a trophy MOD. I justified the cost by patting myself on the back for being analog-free for 3 years. Now that MOD is the single physical representation of my accomplishment, and when I'm 80y/o on my deathbed I hope it won't be far from me. From now until then every time I see that low serial number I'll always remember this time when I made it away from something that was killing me and replaced it with great community like ECF.
Seriously though, I think anything in Tier 1 should be either totally unique like the Steam Punk MODs (the really pretty ones) that are essentially hand-made individual pieces of art -OR- contain copious amounts of precious metal like Gold and Sterling. I saw a MOD made out of solid sterling silver on a euro forum. It had jewelry-like artistic accents of silver leaf embossed on the body. As far as I could tell w/o translation the artist made a mold of a sidewinder-type MOD - cast it in solid silver, machined, decorated, and installed electricals from original MOD. So to me that's Tier 1 because it is one of a kind and precious metal. It probably hits like MF too being all silver.
I'm really surprised we haven't seen anyone busting out artistic MODs made out of Precious Metal Clay (yet)!