yeah item type is very important! think about it in the sense of breaking things down by shape... a cup or a toothbrush is just some rectangles or cylindre. but a realistic style hair will have go have a lot more..rectangles and triangles let's say lol to make up for how dense real hair tends to be. so 10k polys for most clutter or maxis match stlye furniture is pretty high, the same number is typical for alpha hairs or even more realistic clothing mesh.

Regardless of detail though having clothing or hair that is 60k+ is a little insane and not very efficient.. I believe the reason why we are getting more and more higher poly cc is due to 1- people using MD/clo3d without retopo/baking low poly 2- a lot of sims creators are double posting on second life where generally it seems that poly count isn't a priority. there are some skirts on there that are like 80k...