Why buy a GG or Darwin?

[Credo]

Darwins are too expensive. Your paying for a few extra bells and whistles. For the price of a Darwin I can buy a netbook to power a new pass-through lol. Can the darwin connect to wifi? hehehe. When the darwin can vape and surf the web - then its worth the price of a netbook.

Anything thats vaping related has incredible profit margins. When I incredible, its crazy. If you go to Alibaba.com where most suppliers go to get their stuff from china - cheap the stuff really is. Im seriously considering opening an e-juice store here in NJ. Dekang juice, not the best juice bought in bulk is crazy cheap. You pay less then 80 cents per 10ml, bottled and labeled with your logo. Its stunning how much people pay suppliers, myself included. When you look at the Chinese feedback, it shows you the country the buyers are from, you see Americans buying boatloads of the stuff and reselling it here for 10x 20x the price.

You have some good points...and when it comes to the mass produced stuff out of Asia, I somewhat agree (carefully though, as these days to open any kind of business in the USA requires you to pay up to 60% in taxes/licenses/civil fees, another 20% in employee benefits, and another 10% or more bribing the lawyers and crooked politicians not to find some reason to screw you for all you're worth. That leaves only 10% to meet payroll, pay the bills, keep a very small profit for investors [if you're lucky] and hope to restock without going in the red next time). But we're not dealing with stuff made in runs of a million per week here.

I'd love to see someone build a Darwin, Vari, or GG for less than $180. Not even counting personal time in the shop: I'm sure it could be done if you have access to one hell of a work bench and machine shop, but then you'd still be out many hours of time! Just ordering the parts alone (not counting figuring out which ones you want and where to find them) could take a full day of work.

1. Machine tools.
2. Anodizing and other finishing kits.
3. The electronics, boards, and connectors.
4. The batteries.
5. Raw materials (metal/wood/plastic/etc.) , shopping, shipping.

I've built a few things over the years. Just getting a single aluminum part anodized by a pro for my bike cost as much as a Darwin (it was worth it though...what ever that guy touches triples in value just because HIS hands were on it). I once had a single engraving done on a gun...much more simple than a GG's engraving and it cost more to have done than the GGST cost brand new.

I went through over $300 worth of PITA e-cigs before I finally found the Darwin. Nothing else e-cig has been this easy for me to own and use, or held up under extreme stresses (salt water environments, lots of shock, etc.) like this thing has. It's about a year old now and it's been great.

Plus, I could put this thing up for auction tomorrow and get most if not all of my money back. Try that with an eGo? Or even a netbook. I recently had to pay someone $90 to haul off my old PC and have it properly deposed of (I did get the hard drives ground down to powder and smelted tho).

 

[nanovapr]

{snip}Darwins are too expensive. Your paying for a few extra bells and whistles. For the price of a Darwin I can buy a netbook to power a new pass-through lol. Can the darwin connect to wifi? hehehe. When the darwin can vape and surf the web - then its worth the price of a netbook.{/snop}

Joe, with all due respect, you have been vaping for nine days now?

 

[tj99959]

Every mod made has it's minuses as well as it's pluses, and you need to look at them both.

GG:
Way to many threads, way to heavy, beautifully made but over engineered. So it can use an 18650 - 18500 - 18350, all three do the same thing. And then there is the price.
Darwin:
Looks like a digital tire gage, can't just swap bats, swing arm disadvantages, poor switch design. And then there is the price.

Then there's when you like your back up mod so much that your primary mod becomes the back up, it was a poor choice.
So the reality is that neither fits the bill of a great back up mod.
The ideal back up mod should be simplistic, foolproof, bullet proof, and affordable, and there are plenty of choices that fit the bill.

 

[CDnerds]

Joe, with all due respect, you have been vaping for nine days now?

I take to things very quickly . I obsess over things until a fully understand them. The Darwin is an expensive VV mod. My comparisons of the Darwin to a net-book with a passthrough didn't say it was a bad PV, I just said it was an expensive PV. You don't need to be an experienced vaper to justify that price comparison.

 

[Creniker]

A netbook for 240 would be next to useless for most tasks. And even so, a netbook with a passthough is not VV. This is a terrible price comparison. Two objects that are made for entirely different things.

 

[CDnerds]

No one said its the same, I was saying you could buy a netbook and use a VV passthrough for the same price. Did you really think i was saying they were the same thing?

 

[vaptamist]

For the price of a Darwin I could buy a 20$ ego passthrough and 372.9 McDonald's hamburgers on 59 cent hamburger Wednesday. Clearly the Darwin is a bad deal.

 

[nanovapr]

I have a couple of devices (like many/most of us). My main ones are variable, but my favorite backup? Is a relatively cheap ($40 or so) Boge Revolution. It holds 10 ml of juice, built-in passthrough, a spare carto-holder, 1400 mAh batt is good for all day for me if need be.

It is a fixed 3.7v device, but I find that Boge 2 ohm cartos warm it up enough for me, and work plenty well on it. It is very light, and lanyards well, it is my 'outdoor device' when I am mowing and such. It's cheap, it's plastic, but I won't cry to much if I drop it, and mow over it!

 

[Credo]

For the price of a Darwin I could buy a 20$ ego passthrough and 372.9 McDonald's hamburgers on 59 cent hamburger Wednesday. Clearly the Darwin is a bad deal.

Use your $20 passthrough for a year and eat all your hamburgers, then post the products/leftovers of these investments on an auction or classified. Could you get 50% or more of your money back?

I went through $300 worth of factory e-cig stuff (including one eGo passthrough) and most of it was dead within' 6 months of use.

Darwin is going on a year now and still has a year of warranty left. I've actually had offers to buy it for up to $40 over list price, and mine is not even mint condition anymore.

There is more to value than simple math and plain logic of practicality.

Maybe the world is full of suckers with rare over-appraised comic book and stamp collections....but those suckers sure are good at wearing stuff out and then flipping it for a second life with a new owner at some point.

A signature GG, Darwin, or Limited Vari could well be worth ten grand someday. Worst case...you use it for 2 to 4 years and chunk it....still got a ton of vaping in for less than $1 a day. It's really not much of a risk considering it's highly likely that anyone who invests in some of these early mods own a piece of world history that could be worth WAY more than the initial investment in short order.

Someday really nice e-cigs will probably be super cheap...and these small mod shops will either cease to be, or move on to even more 'exclusively' priced/produced products. If you've got the extra cash to play with collectibles, e-cig mods of today are a pretty good gamble.

Just as one example...I've seen things as simple as a 1 million piece run of a zippo lighter, or a case knife, go for over $1,000 each less than a decade later. And here we have these beautiful mods...still in numbers of well under 5,000 in some cases....all at the beginning of a brand new industry. At the least, you'll get your money worth of 'use' out of it...but will probably also get your money back or more if you half way take care of it.

 

[CDnerds]

Use your $20 passthrough for a year and eat all your hamburgers, then post the products/leftovers of these investments on an auction or classified. Could you get 50% or more of your money back?

I went through $300 worth of factory e-cig stuff (including one eGo passthrough) and most of it was dead within' 6 months of use.

Darwin is going on a year now and still has a year of warranty left. I've actually had offers to buy it for up to $40 over list price, and mine is not even mint condition anymore.

There is more to value than simple math and plain logic of practicality.

Maybe the world is full of suckers with rare over-appraised comic book and stamp collections....but those suckers sure are good at wearing stuff out and then flipping it for a second life with a new owner at some point.

A signature GG, Darwin, or Limited Vari could well be worth ten grand someday. Worst case...you use it for 2 to 4 years and chunk it....still got a ton of vaping in for less than $1 a day. It's really not much of a risk considering it's highly likely that anyone who invests in some of these early mods own a piece of world history that could be worth WAY more than the initial investment in short order.

Someday really nice e-cigs will probably be super cheap...and these small mod shops will either cease to be, or move on to even more 'exclusively' priced/produced products. If you've got the extra cash to play with collectibles, e-cig mods of today are a pretty good gamble.

Just as one example...I've seen things as simple as a 1 million piece run of a zippo lighter, or a case knife, go for over $1,000 each less than a decade later. And here we have these beautiful mods...still in numbers of well under 5,000 in some cases....all at the beginning of a brand new industry. At the least, you'll get your money worth of 'use' out of it...but will probably also get your money back or more if you half way take care of it.

Im all for solid metal mods. I bought a bombshell for 60 bucks, that thing fell 25 feet on cement and it has a little ding on it. The thing is a tank.

 

[sachavaca]

I feel that mods that use atomizers ect are on the way out. zenesis or the line seem to be greatly improving. the oddisy is based on outdated platform and every gg related item is way overpriced. a good ecig should use 1 battery (not stacked), few parts, gg looks like you tore apart a transmission. and simple to use unless your trying to make an art out of vaping

 

[sachavaca]

signature gg worth ten grand, yah right!!!!. are you going to be the buyer?. crazy talk. we will all be looking back thinking we used to use that primative method

 

[Credo]

signature gg worth ten grand, yah right!!!!. are you going to be the buyer?. crazy talk. we will all be looking back thinking we used to use that primative method

Keep laughing.
I have a boy scout knife that cost me $11 in 1988. They made millions of them. Today it's worth over $200, and yes...I've had hard cash offers for it...have also let a few similar peices go (slightly older and more valuable) at considerable profit. I've got NASA stamps that only cost a few cents for bags full in 1970...Apollo, Gemini, Friendship, etc. They made so many no one thought they'd ever be worth anything...folks threw them away, plastered them on garbage cans, etc. Now if you still have some in mint, it could be worth thousands (and yep, I could sell them...but right now they are worth more than the world currencies..so it'd be foolish).

There are only thousands of these mods in existence....so chances are they'll be worth a decent amount someday as well.

There are quite a few comic books that appraise for well over 300k, are insurable for far more, and change hands regularly at those kinds of prices.

If you don't believe something like a limited production mod produced in the early years of an industry will be worth something someday...oh well.

A GG might not ever be worth 10k, but I can almost promise you that it'll be worth more than it's initial list price someday. The more rare it is, the more it'll be worth.

Collecting isn't for everyone......but for those that do, they've learned that it's always worthwhile to have a few art or collectible pieces in their portfolio. When you live through the birth of a brand new industry that could change the world (or even just be a short lived fad)...it never hurts to put a few pieces in the attic You might not strike it 'rich', but chances are VERY GOOD you'll at least get your money back (plus the years of use from the item).

 

[vaptamist]

Use your $20 passthrough for a year and eat all your hamburgers, then post the products/leftovers of these investments on an auction or classified. Could you get 50% or more of your money back?

I went through $300 worth of factory e-cig stuff (including one eGo passthrough) and most of it was dead within' 6 months of use.

Darwin is going on a year now and still has a year of warranty left. I've actually had offers to buy it for up to $40 over list price, and mine is not even mint condition anymore.

There is more to value than simple math and plain logic of practicality.

Maybe the world is full of suckers with rare over-appraised comic book and stamp collections....but those suckers sure are good at wearing stuff out and then flipping it for a second life with a new owner at some point.

A signature GG, Darwin, or Limited Vari could well be worth ten grand someday. Worst case...you use it for 2 to 4 years and chunk it....still got a ton of vaping in for less than $1 a day. It's really not much of a risk considering it's highly likely that anyone who invests in some of these early mods own a piece of world history that could be worth WAY more than the initial investment in short order.

Someday really nice e-cigs will probably be super cheap...and these small mod shops will either cease to be, or move on to even more 'exclusively' priced/produced products. If you've got the extra cash to play with collectibles, e-cig mods of today are a pretty good gamble.

Just as one example...I've seen things as simple as a 1 million piece run of a zippo lighter, or a case knife, go for over $1,000 each less than a decade later. And here we have these beautiful mods...still in numbers of well under 5,000 in some cases....all at the beginning of a brand new industry. At the least, you'll get your money worth of 'use' out of it...but will probably also get your money back or more if you half way take care of it.

Sorry, sarcasm doesn't work over the internet. I have a Darwin and love it - my point making a comparison price wise between mcdonald's hamburgers and an e cig makes about as much sense as a Darwin and a Netbook. It's all about priorities and what the item is worth to you. Some people would be fine vaping on a 20$ passthrough and get more enjoyment out of having 350 hamburgers or a netbook. Something like a Darwin or a GG isn't for someone who is just vaping to quit smoking - they're for people who have made vaping and collecting mods a hobby while looking for "the best vape".

For the record - one of my first purchases was a 20$ ego passthrough and it was a fantastic purchase. It's still working great after almost 5 months now, and while I don't use it all the time, it does work pretty nicely with a LR carto, or a slim tank when I need something small without a whole lot of fuss to take out with me.

 

[golferman]

I have own both twice over. I found the Darwin more functional for my vaping style. With anything that is not VV or VW like the Darwin it becomes a pain to get the right taste. As far as I am concern they both play second fiddle to the ProVari. There is nothing like dialing into the taste that is just right. With the Darwin you can do that to a certain degree. The Darwin only goes up to 12.7 watts and that's it so you are limited. With the new V2 ProVaries that you have a 3.5 amp limit now. I think it is each his own. Any mod may be worth $50 to one person and $250 to another person. The GG was a PITA.

 

[austintx]

I've had a provari for a year, but it doesn't work well for me. It always seems to burn out my atomizers - I'm thinking of selling it and getting something different.

Lame question - but what is the GG short for and where do you buy it?

thanks

 

[Creniker]

No one said its the same, I was saying you could buy a netbook and use a VV passthrough for the same price. Did you really think i was saying they were the same thing?

Link to the VV passthrough? Or a VW passthrough. And the ego 3.2-3.7-4.2 doesnt count. Thats multiple voltage not variable. Oh wait I think there is a VV/VW unit that does function as a passthrough. What was it again?

 

[suddenly]

My GG is working great after a year.

But it is turning black. What can I do?????

 

[nanovapr]

Suddenly, is your brass? Brass discolors easily, but I think it cleans up well. Perhaps some Brasso, or some other type of metal polish. I'm not familiar with the finish on a GG, but you may want to avoid anything very abrasive.

 

[suddenly]

Suddenly, is your brass? Brass discolors easily, but I think it cleans up well. Perhaps some Brasso, or some other type of metal polish. I'm not familiar with the finish on a GG, but you may want to avoid anything very abrasive.

I even tried silver polish--no go!