Hot take: the $180 Herman Miller Aeron arm pads were the best money I spent on my desk
I ripped through four cheap chairs in three years before dropping $180 just on the arm pads for a used Aeron I picked up in Austin. Everyone told me I was nuts paying that much for foam, but my wrists stopped aching within a week of swapping them on. The knockoff pads I tried first for $25 felt fine for two days, then flattened into sad pancakes that left red marks on my forearms. Now I keep a spare set in my closet because I never want to go back to that mushy mess. What's the most you've paid for a single part on something you already owned?
Laughing at myself because I once paid $95 for a single replacement caster wheel set for an old Steelcase chair I got for free off Craigslist. The chair was free, the wheels cost almost a hundred bucks, and my wife still brings it up at dinner parties like I committed a crime. But here's the thing, those cheap plastic wheels scratched up my hardwood floors so bad I had to pay way more to get the floors fixed than I ever spent on the wheels themselves. Same deal as your arm pads, the cheap version costs you twice because you end up buying the real one anyway plus dealing with the mess in between. I spent two years telling myself the knockoffs were fine while my back quietly hated me every single day. Sometimes the "overpriced" part is the only part that actually works.