So you would rather have good QC on a shitty hook rather than poor QC on a good hook. Got it.

Owner cutting points, and matzuo sickles. As Todd says, buy more than 10 at a time and the price thing is fairly negligible.

I think it is pretty easy to tell a good hook from a bad one just by looking at it. The hooks construction (eye, bend, barb, point, finish) and appearance of the wire (grainy vs smooth, relastive thickness) give away a lot about how much tlc it was given in the design and build processes.

If you haven't noticed a difference between the more expensive hooks and the cheaper ones, you haven't spent enough time comparing them.