I bought a few expensive lights in my CPF days. They were wonderful. The main difference was that the builder was simply trying to build the best light that they could, and implement some new idea that they felt needed building because no one was already building it. They weren’t trying to build yet another light of features X to sell at price Y. Also, they were present on the forum and discussed the design and construction as the light progressed, like the modders do here now.
In that era (before 2015 or so maybe), flashlights had mostly transitioned from incandescent to led, but lights were usually had just one or two brightness levels and were mechanically switched. The main cost of a light went into very high quality materials and maching, and you felt it when you held the light in your hand. There were no mysteries. The hard work and creativity that went into the light was right there in front of you. And justly or not, you felt like you had been part of the process yourself, and that investment made the actual dollars less relevant. So it felt perfectly fine to spend amounts that were crazy if you only went by volts and lumens.
A little later, computerized lights started to appear, and lights started to get “secret sauce”, which was not automatically bad, but which created a great locus to attract bullshit. So from what I gather, expensive lights became shiny baubles like a poor person’s Swiss watches, instead of carrying a sense that you were advancing the state of the art by discussing and buying the things. Meanwhile, the problems that had been difficult for the 2010-era modders became easy to crank out on an industrial scale. I get the impression that those two factors are why CPF shrank so much.
The most interesting new flashlight development to me personally is Anduril, which is what brought me here to BLF. Finally some of that creative spirit is again coming from the users and not just the faraway manufacturers. Of course some of the manufacturers/builders are here in person and I’m glad of that too. But it doesn’t do much for me when there is only a rep posting sales threads, instead of having the person with the machine tools and soldering gear actually here to talk to us.
Anyway, Anduril is an area where I hope I can contribute something, so from my perspective these are good times.