A few bucks, but its not much at all, especially with Tain. He's charging 8.50 a tube installed and most places sell just the tube for 6. So its what, maybe a $18 difference on a light like this -- not much. For me, probably the big thing is that I just like doing things myself. Most of my lights are modded in some way, just to make it feel more like mine I guess. So I like knowing that I did my own trit work on this light.
But there's another big one: Tain says in his first post that shipping times could vary based on trit stock. I just
hate the idea that my awesome new light may be sitting on a table somewhere in Taiwan waiting on some trits to be installed (or maybe even delivered), when it could be here in my hand waiting on those trits. So I ordered the light bare hoping for the fastest possible shipping, and simultaneously ordered trits from my normal source. I have no idea if it got me my light faster or not, but at least I tried