Yes:
My opinion on this: I’ve spent a lot on modding older lights because I like them. It gives me good feelings to improve things. For sure, if Simon makes a new pill, it will be as expensive as a new light. So what? You keep your trusty old light full of signs of your use and make it better.
C’mone, that’s romance 
Ok but OP was talking about upgrading as an investment. As an investment, it’s a losing proposition.
Likely.
Back in the day of drop-ins, you had Ultrafire (C8, ’501, ’502, etc.), Solarforce (L2 series), NexTorch, the OG Suefires, and a plethora of mfrs who made lights that took drop-ins. Hell, even the Gen-I C8 had a pill instead of integrated shelf (Gen-II and up).
My cheap C8 clones used crappy thin Al pills but also accepted thicker heavier brass pills for real C8s. As long as not too high-strung, I could still use the crappy pills.
All my LEDs, drivers, etc., weren’t for upgrading lights, but for building custom drop-ins. Hell, half of what I bought from FT early on was empty D26 drop-ins. SMO/OP reflectors, XP/XM center holes, typische NANJG drivers, etc.
So I could change from a throwier SMO/NW/XP-E drop-in to a floodier OP/WW/XM-L drop-in to red/green/UV, whatever I had on hand. And they all worked interchangeably.
Those could be changed by hand, vs, say, an S2+ where you’d need some tools to swap pills. Doable, but not “in the field”.
Later, the craze for “integrated” lights with custom drivers, sideswitches, enough to wring out 1200lm or more, kinda pushed drop-ins to the wayside. You wanna swap anything, it’s major surgery, and that’s if the damned things weren’t glued shut. So unless you wanted to go that route, you had to settle for whatever crappy lumen-wringing CW emitter you initially got stuck with.
So unless you beat a host to Hell, it was worth it to just keep a bunch of drop-ins and swap as needed.
Tubelights like the S2+, too much of a pain to swap, even if building new pills is fairly easy, so you’d keep individual lights.
Newer lights that are like 100% custom with zero interchangeability except maybe for battery tubes (regular/shorty), you keep ’em as you buy ’em. Doesn’t pay to mod ’em unless you’re really determined.
Would be nice to see pill-based lights make a resurgence, but I’m not holding my breath.
well, “upgrading” just about anything in the cost range of an average flashlight does not make economic sense to a lot of people.
upgrading my clothes is something i do not do; i repair them, but i do not make them better than before.
additionally, i would not pay more to do so. fashion and flashlights are cheap enough to buy the newest
and donate or give away the functional older styles.
Oh, c’mon… Who here has not at least once bought frills and turned a regular button-down into a puffy frilly Pirate Shirt?
Whines ” But I don’t want to be a pirate!”
in answer, i once made a Nehru jacket,
but upgrade is not the word to use.
Cosmo Kramer: This pirate trend that she's come up with, Jerry, this is gonna be the new look for the '90s. You're gonna be the first pirate!
Jerry Seinfeld: But I don't want to be a pirate!
That’s the one!
I wish companies would at least start making the heads more readily available with interchangable battery tubes. It seems to me they could make 1 universal tube for each battery size and the consumer could put any one of a dozen different heads on it they could buy seperately. The same battery tube could be used for throwers and flood in a wide array of led configurations. It would even be nice if the battery tubes were universal across brands. I know that would require some collaboration of competitors, but they did it with houshold lamps, electric outlets, DVD players, blueray, etc. They could do the same with battery tubes for flashlight heads. Then not only would my light collection be less costly, but would take up less physical space as well. Is the tube and grounding spring that different between my astrolux FT-03 sst40-w and the astrolux FT-03S…I don’t think so. Why cant they standardize battery tubes? It would save tons of aluminum.
AFAIK, the only company that has been successful doing that is Maglite. Don’t the 2D—>5D use the same head?
A very large number of my flashlights are not cheap at all, unless you are very wealthy. Some cost over 200 dollars, but that is about the limit I am willing to spend, and I am financially secure. Sure there are decent led lights for 20 bucks, but we collectors seem to go for the more expensive lights as well. I am starting to be much more selective though. With over 200 flashlights, it is getting somewhat ridiculous, and I am thinking I may be more of a hoarder than collector.
We can make it, better, stronger, faster.
I’m surprised that no one bothered to tell you that the Convoy M1 doesn’t have a pill to be able to get an upgraded one for replacement.
Most flashlights today have an integrated shelf, so there’s no possible way to provide an upgraded pill. A pill has poor heat transfer compared to an integrated shelf.
Learn to solder it’s not hard. I can do it and I’ve got terrible hand tremors
Debatable.
Integrated shelves could be paper-thin, and it’s just like having a mcpcb mounted on another mcpcb on a chintzy little ledge.
Pills often come with assloads of snug-fitting thread-area for pretty good heat transfer. Lookit the S2+’s pill as an example.
Well, on most decent brands. Isn’t this why Simon moved away from pills on the C8?
I hate soldering drivers onto pills and it offers more chance of a short if you’re clumsy (like me!).
The most likely reason most brands don’t do it is because it doesn’t offer more chance of profit for them - if it did, they would offer it.
Many of the brands like Malkoff, Lumens Factory, Overready, etc. that offer drop-ins and head replacements sell their products at a premium and market to customers that are often looking for that specific feature.
Worth noting that unglued retaining rings and pills as a mounting/retention method is on paper more prone to issues than more permanently secured methods - an important factor for lights where users don’t know and/or want to have to be tightening down retaining rings when their light starts flickering.
Many brands also seem to have an aversion to letting customers easily disassemble their lights at all, for a number of reasons.
Unno. A bunch around the same time started going with shelves. Convoy, UF, XinTD, etc., all started going that way, but no idea who was first, etc.