The "What's it really worth" segment has been a tad neglected over the past several months, but it's not exactly something that you always have worthy subject matter for. 20% off? Buy one, get one free (BOGO)? So called 'employee pricing'? Nothin' doin'. This is for serious deals - sharp discounts. Deals so good that they cause you to pause on your way to the cashier, thinking, "Wait. So what's this really worth?!" This is one of those times.

We had purchased these a while back, but they had been in cold storage until the opportunity arrived recently to install them when we were reminded of this deal. Did we need 4 new light fixtures? No. We needed one because the main kitchen light had gone bad. Somehow. But! Were we going to pass up the opportunity to get 4 matching fixtures that could replace the one that had failed and three others that were underpowered and ugly? Not on this day!

We already wanted to goose up the brightness in the hallway which gets no significant natural light at any point of the day. The existing fixtures did an excellent job a throttling the brightness that they did have by about half. Being who we are, we naturally wanted something cost effective, but also low-wattage fluorescent for our fixtures. Options: Zero. We got to the end of the lighting isle at Lowes, and looked back saying, "Where's the good stuff?" Everything was low-output LED, or high-heat halogen, or just plain ugly. Where were the nice looking, designed-for-fluorescent fixtures? Apparently not at Lowes. Home Depot was no help either.... at first glance. Once we found the isle o' fluorescent, we found a whole host of fixtures. A much better selection than Lowes, but they seemed to be separated into two categories: Grandma's basement, and needlessly expensive. Ug.

After three passes, the Mrs. was ready to walk. I couldn't blame her. We were both pissed. We knew that in about 18-months, after settling for something lesser, there would be any number of attractive, cost-effective solutions. I talked her into one more pass. I don't know how, but I did. "What amazing deal are we going to find that we already walked by 3 times?" A few minutes later, I had the answer.

While walking the isle this time, I cross referenced the display items with the stock below. A couple bins toward the end had no display. "What are these?" They turned out to be somewhat stylish fixtures originally marked at $74.95. OUCH! For some reason, they were on clearance, but not congregated to the endcap with the other clearance items - despite the lack of a display model. The sticker for their bin had them marked down to 10 dollars and some odd sense. There were 4 left - two blue, two amber. We took one of the amber ones and pushed the rest back out of sight (it may have been kind of a dick move, but it worked). We wanted to make sure that it was the right size and would put out enough light.

When we got to the check out, the price was not $10.something. It was even less! We paid just over 7 dollars for this thing. We installed it that night, and were so pleased with it that we bought the other three the next night. They were just where we had left them. We had budgeted $40 for the kitchen light, little did we know we would get 4 for that amount!

Styling? Check - good fit for decor. Low-price? Yep - still under budget despite purchasing 4 of them. Low-wattage? Relatively, see next. Good light output? Oh, yeah! These things put out so much dog-gone light it's unbelievable. Very high compared to the wattage.

So what are they really worth?