Nice get.
Merino stuff seems to vary little in price generally, one manufacturer to another. Though John Fenna recently pointed out that Aldi stuff is pretty good and much more affordable. Personally, I get Smartwool stuff in the sales, and periodically scrape up cash and order things directly from New Zealand (NZ NAture for eg. but there is a bunch of companies). Also, there is this other wool starting to make a showing: Rambouillet, grown in the US and apparently as good as Merino. It is cheaper at the moment. (I haven't tried any of it)
Aside .... This is a bit OT, but I only just discovered this factette, and thought I'd share. I was out for 3 1/2 hours today trotting around the mountain bike trails in the local ravines now that nobody is going to really be using them for a bit.
Wearing and Arcteryx Atom LT jacket, I was ... which I usually wouldn't have because it is a bit warm for that sort of thing. Anyway, though it was cool and dry when I left the house, the weather soon shifted to about 2C and that persistent rain stuff the whole time I was out; sometimes fierce-ish, sometimes just heavy drizzling. I was surprised to see that the DWR on the jacket didn't fail at all. It just kept beading up and rolling off. Wetted out a bit at the cuff.
The Atom isn't quite as breathable as the Rab Vaporise lines. I'd been blaming that on the Coreloft it uses. Now I think it's the DWR and the weave of the nylon shell. The point is that I hadn't realized this before now - it is more or less a waterproof jacket for a certain duration of waterproof. I have been idly thinking about getting the AR version of this one, but the expense seems silly. Now I am not so sure about that. And, they are a lot cheaper in the April/May sales. An actually waterproof, belay-type jacket for the same price as it would cost me here to buy a hooded Buffalo.
