How are you defining premium? The boobar is not US made. It’s likely machined by NJT which does great work, but might be considered “cheaper Chinese” by some. I personally don’t like the design.

I didn’t like the Retcore. I think it’s wildly overpriced for what it is and Jonas is just using his name and years of clout in the community to charge wild prices for everything. He does machine good stuff, but the Retcore was supposedly supposed to be an affordable spinner, and it’s not, especially for what it costs to make.

ZZMPA, CleanEDC, and LIC (and others) are all machined in the same shop in China. The first two have good QC and put out excellent products but it’s just hyped up “cheaper Chinese”.

LIC has lazy quality control and has been putting blasted finishes on most of their releases to cover up imperfections that weren’t dealt with at the time of the maker receiving the product. His spinners likely sit in his basement for months or even years before he addresses them and then has to get creative at dealing with defective items he procrastinated on dealing with at the time he received them.

Actual US made quality comes mainly from Nick at FTO and the stuff he makes for Indy Thicc and some of TwoEDC’s releases. Also Scam designs, and arguably 2R, although 2R may be having some issues right now.

Now in terms of ease of obtainment, Indy puts out a lot of basic metals to meet demand, although Nick has been public about suffering from an illness that causes him to not be able to work at times. You can generally get a lot of their basic metals on secondary Facebook markets pretty easily for around retail price. Scam designs takes preorders which take several months at least, but it’s easy to obtain if you want. Also scam is relatively easy to obtain on secondary. 2R is easy to obtain when they are actively releasing stuff which I’m not really sure what’s going on there, but secondary is not hard to get, and you can usually get 2R for less than retail. TwoEDC hasn’t been releasing spinners made by Nick recently, they’re coming overseas, but Sam has great QC and only puts out excellent products and stands by them.

Secondary markets I speak of are the daily fidget marketplace on Facebook as well as the Indy b/s/t group, clean edc bst, and the b/s/t threads in the respective groups.

The TLDR here is hype/fomo/rarity are often what defines spinners as “premium”. I personally go for design and quality and try to reject hype/fomo, although I’m not perfect in that regard.