> i’d rather buy a small number of high quality

See, something I've noticed too is that "high price / high quality" brands seem to not be so anymore. Recently I bought a handful of Carhartt pants, pricey-but-quality, or so it used to be yet the quality seems to have been driven downhill and all those pants quickly fell apart in various ways.

I've found the $20-$30 lesser-known brands ended up being of higher quality, oddly. It seems the "premium" brands have taken to abusing their name's mark of quality by removing that quality in favor or cheap materials and temporary higher profits.