:-d
my sm glow has 80tubes
$150 x 80 = $12.000
wow
I believe that cost was quoted once upon a time in the watch community, bcs there was some distributor, at some point, selling tubes at an astronomical cost.
A per-tube costing approach wouldn't make sense, though. Tritium tubes aren't that expensive. You can find novelty tritium tube key rings for a tenth of that cost. You can buy a tritium illuminated exit sign with at least ten times the amount of tritium in it than your watch for under $200. So, they're *regulated, but that doesn't mean they're expensive. The barriers to entry have more to do with regulation than fabrication. Who wants to jump through all those hoops.
It's the labor that governs cost. The labor involved in mounting a would be akin to the labor required in removing & re-applying chapter rings. Is the cost of the applying the 10th marker $150 more than the 9th? Really, the costs are much more accurately associated to the workflow, or activity-based costing...disassembly, dismounting, mounting, refinishing, etc.
However, 80 markers...I would not be surprised if it cost somewhere in the order of 4 digits to mount 80 markers, whether it's tritium or not.
