There is a version of this argument that is mostly marketing, and it usually skips the arithmetic. So here is the arithmetic.
The math, honestly
A cheap belt pouch replaced every eighteen months over ten years is roughly seven pouches. A well-made one is one pouch. Depending on the prices involved, the ten-year cost can come out about even, or the cheap route can be slightly less.
So the case is not always financial. Anyone telling you it always is has not run the numbers.
What changes is everything around the number.
What you are actually buying
You stop deciding. Seven pouches is seven purchases, seven comparisons, seven deliveries. Buying once removes an entire recurring task from your life. People underrate this until they experience it.
It fails gracefully or not at all. Cheap gear fails suddenly, and usually at the worst moment, because the failure mode is a snapped clasp or a burst seam. Good gear wears. You can see it coming for a year.
It can be fixed. A stitched seam can be restitched. A glued or heat-sealed one cannot. That is the difference between an object with a future and one without.
It gets better. This is the part that has no equivalent on the other side. Vegetable-tanned leather darkens, softens and takes the shape of how it is used. The five-year-old version is better than the new one, which is not true of almost anything else you own. Explained properly in why leather darkens.
Where the argument does not apply
Being fair about this matters.
If you do not know yet whether you will keep doing the activity, buy the cheap one. Somebody who has been foraging twice does not need a pouch built for a decade. Find out first.
If the object is genuinely disposable by function, buy the disposable one.
And if the budget is not there this month, the honest advice is to wait rather than stretch. Nothing we make is urgent.
How to tell which one you are holding
Four checks, none of which require expertise.
- The edge. Burnished and sealed, or fuzzy, or painted with a lip you can feel. The clearest single indicator, covered in why edges matter.
- The stitching. Hand saddle stitch does not unravel when cut. A machine lockstitch does. See saddle stitch versus machine stitch.
- The leather. Full-grain has marks. A perfectly uniform surface has usually been sanded and coated. See full-grain versus top-grain versus genuine.
- The hardware. Solid brass or steel, or plated. Plating fails first and takes the piece with it.
The part that is not about money
An object made by one person at one bench carries information about how it was made. You can see the small variations where a hand paused. That is not a defect being excused, it is the record of the thing being made rather than produced.
Whether that matters to you is a real question with a real answer either way. If it does, the whole sequence is in one bench, start to finish, and you can come do it yourself at a studio workshop.