The Stupidest Thing You Will See Today: $30,000.00 Headphones

You do understand that sort of a thing is done for the technical research and for the bragging rights. Selling a limited series of cutting edge stuff in the early 90s gives us a lot of affordable stuff in 2010s.

So I've seen an $8 coffee, a painting that cost $50,000 that I would never admit to owning and an early 2000s Honda Civic with probably more than $15,000 in after market changes. So this statement is completely false:
Just know, no matter what horrors you see tonight, no matter what twisted abominations you witness walking the street, nothing will be scarier than knowing you live in a world where this kind of gross and pointless excess is seen as acceptable.

Audio equipment is one of those things that most people will never know what the difference is between what they think is good and what actually is excellent (users of Apple or Beats headphones come to mind). If you take out the collector price and would have bought them new, you probably wouldn't have thought much of plugging $1,200 headphones into your $10,000+ audio setup.

Excess is mostly governed by what you feel is important. I think anyone spending more than $1 on coffee or $75 on shoes crazy, yet I take notes with a $80 pen.

They aren't really 30K though, they only run 30K used now because they are a collector's item. Even the 12K is high, they ran around 10K when they were originally sold (a local audio shop had them as a centerpiece when I was a kid). Sennheiser designed them to be the most over the top, over-designed, cream of the crop headphone in the world, and released a limited number of units (not enough to make any real money off of). It was specifically to show the world what they are capable of. They are still considered by many to be the best headphones ever made (with some competition by Stax + third party amplifiers).

Bottom line, they're a showpiece, like a limited edition car. It's for the elite to buy, and the average consumer to oo and ah over what could be possible. They aren't scary, they are actually a really impressive and interesting piece of technology and design. Overpriced? absolutely, though not so much for this guy since he obviously got them at the low point before they became a hot item for 6K. If you ever get a chance to listen, do. I've only heard them very briefly once in a meetup environment, which was not the best, but no doubt they are incredible.

You know what's scarier to me? The amount of profit made off a pair of headphones like the Beats, all due to a name (and color options), and which are also overpriced if you know anything about headphone design. Sennheiser (and Shure, and AKG, and Beyerdynimic...) proved their worth via engineering, while Beats made a killing through marketing.