One Dollar Glasses – Help for 150M people

This is fantastic, and I will definitely be making a donation, but I think they would benefit from taking a page out of the Lucky Iron Fish book, and sending a pair of the glasses to donors who contribute 50 dollars or more. I have found the Lucky Iron Fish I have to be helpful in convincing others to donate, and I think having a pair of these glasses could similarly make the project more tangible to prospective donors.

http://www.luckyironfish.com/

I got 4 pairs of glasses on amazon (needed the opposite of reading glasses which are hard to find in stores) for $8. I was pretty darn impressed by how cheap the free market is vs doctors offices.

why are these glasses so cheap?

My glasses cost $39 from one of the many online cheap glasses makers. So now I have more money to donate to the $1 glasses campaign :)

Last time I got glasses, I tried a test, I bought the $300 glasses from my eye doctor ("only" $200 after insurance), and I bought a pair of $39 glasses online. I found no difference between the two other than price (and the ones I bought online arrived by mail the day before the expensive pair was ready from my eye doctor).

And I bought a second pair of backup glasses for less than my eye doctor wanted for his "lens protection insurance".

Though admittedly, I have a simple, low-power prescription (< -3.0, no astigmatism), so your milage might vary with a more complex prescription.

> why are these glasses so cheap?

The frames are being made from cheap materials (plain wire) closer-to or at the location of the recipients. Another HNer mentioned the person behind this invented a small wire bending device, and that's being used here to form the frames.

I would wager, as well, that the lenses don't have all the fancy coatings and such that you might get from an Optometrist (anti-scratch/fog/glare/shatter, etc)... although when your options are cheap glasses vs. no glasses, most people will opt for having glasses.