I was meeting a friend at the schaumburg outback last night for dinner (Schaumburg is a chicago suburb), so I decided to stop by the Rockler store there and pick up the D-handle for my PC 690.
Let me first say this this place is like a candy store and I've bought things there on many occasions.
I didn't check online to see what a good price on the D-handle was, but my gut told me that it should be about $50. I walked in and asked the guy if they had one. He was very helpful. Then I noticed the price: $98... for a cast aluminum frame, plastic handle, power plug connector, power cord, and trigger. For comparrison, this is about what those huge cast iron tennoning jigs cost. So I put it back and left.
When I arrived home last night, I looked up the item on amazon: $70. Now I can understand that schaumburg isn't a cheap area. And I can understand that they need to make some money and can't really compete directly with online places, but $30 is a little excessive.
The weird thing is that some of the items seemed to have very good prices. Maybe this is a special case.
brian