It's worse than that. Tefillin must be written by someone with genuine fear of Heaven, because the materials are so costly, it takes a stupendous amount of time to write them, and certain mistakes render them ruined in a way that they are invalid yet cannot (usually) be detected after the fact. We need someone who is more afraid of causing a Jew to not have worn tefillin in his life (because he sold him invalid tefillin) than the money loss.
@yfr bachur , you ever wrote tefillin? And what do nice pairs from a reputable source go for in EY today?
No. Not Yet.
No Idea what they cost today, I'll try to find out.
When my father bought us (my brother and I) our Mehudar pairs about a decade ago - it was about $1500-2000 for the parshiyos, and $1200-1500 for the batim, bit that waas def high end,the parshiyos were custom made, with certain rarer hidurim
Why was he buying us tfillin when we turned 20? Our Rav told his talmidim who wanted to buy their sons mehudarim to buy 13yr olds good tfilin and when they get older buy them mehudarim, A. its not good to get children used to getting the top of the line anything - creates entitlement. B. teenagers dont have thegrearest record for taking proper care of their tfillin... and once he ruins/looses them once - you aint going to break the bank for the replacement...
