A $50 tool building bad habits is worse than using nothing at all.

Did you hear that from the forum over on the Metal Detecting Weekly? I saw a thread there saying the cheap ones are fine if you just want to try it out.

My grandmother had a cast iron nutcracker that looked like it survived the civil war, she'd crack walnuts with it while muttering about the neighborhood kids. Thing was so heavy you could use it as a doorstop, but that nutcracker never broke a single hinge in fifty years. Sometimes old metal just has that stubborn refusal to quit, like a grumpy uncle who won't leave the cookout.

My brother actually works in marketing and he told me something wild about this. He said the whole reason cable commercials felt like breaks was because they were literally designed that way - shows would end on mini cliffhangers right before the break. Streaming killed that completely. Now you can just roll right into the next scene and your brain gets pissed when something interrupts it. I noticed it when I tried watching regular TV at a hotel last month. Ten minutes into a show and boom, a diaper commercial. Felt like getting punched in the face.

Yeah, that lines up with what I've seen. Those old selenium meters do fade over time, especially if they sat in a drawer for decades. I had a Canonet QL17 that was underexposing by two stops at 400 ISO, totally useless above 800 like you said. Only fix is either get it recalibrated by a repair shop or just use an external meter. Honestly, for most vintage cameras, I'd just get a cheap handheld meter and leave the built in one for reference. Metering apps on your phone work pretty good too, just need to be careful in bright sun.