My 1973 Super Sport has the Velo-Orange 130 mm Grand Cru hub for a freewheel. I love the hubs and thought the rear hub was a good deal for $75.00.

0430201173SS 130 by vonfilm, on Flickr

I had thought about building another bike with cassette version when they became available. Now they are available, but are $160.00. Why so much more?

https://store.velo-orange.com/index.p...aring-hub.html

Cassette hubs have the freewheel built in - that has to be considerably more expensive to manufacture, I would think.

Consider how many more pieces there are in a freehub than a freewheel hub. I'm sure the manufacturing costs are moderately higher per unit, and the setup costs are *much* higher because a lot more tooling needs to be made.

Note the price difference between a Phil freehub and a Phil freewheel hub: $450 vs $180.

I'm not a hub manufacturer, so I can't tell how much of this difference is genuinely cost-related and how much is just "that's what the market will bear to pay." So, that's all I've got.

The freehub bodies run about $60-$90 to replace on most after market hubs. And the other expense is they are using an over sized axle so probably a bearing that cost more than the more common 6001 bearings used by other manufactures and they used 4 of them. You can buy a Mavic Aksium rear wheel,sealed bearings, for about $130 built.

While I thought they freehub version was expensive, there might be much more exclusive tooling for it, different supplier(s) for the components, I doubt the freewheel body is made by the hub maker. And do not forget pricing movements over time.

All that written, it makes the Electra Campagnolo "tribute" hubs appear less outrageous, I have no idea how good they are, but they are handsome.

For me though, I have to double check the suppliers to respace the cogs or an alternate cassette to get them to work with Campagnolo components, my only set of STI levers is broken of course.