We gave up buying expensive luggage - it seemed to get destroyed just as fast as the cheap stuff. And you can buy five or six cheapies for the price of one expensive one - and then you've got new bags, not beat up ones.
guess when we think about what happens to your luggage in the bowels of an airport, on trailers out to the plane, thrown in the baggage hold, thrown back off the plane and vomited up onto a moving carousel... well, our luggage lives a tough life. And that's before it gets thrown into those giant cart/baskets and wheeled onto the ship.
A couple of years ago we bought these big black Coleman softsiders at Wally World that were cheap. And ... they have endured marvelously well. Kinda stunned. We'll use'em until they break and then go get more I guess. Big summer of travel. We'll see how they look by this fall!