You got interesting friends and that's wonderful. I don't know. Something about pre-patched jeans strike me as even more wrong than pre-stressed jeans. I hate the word "authentic" when it comes to describing what something is or isn't in spirit, but you know, darn if that doesn't strike me as not authentic. I'm kind of sad that I recycled all of my old jeans and bought new ones literally about six months before I discovered visible mending. I probably could have saved all of those pants for at least a few more years, and in the process, a lot of money. Thanks to stretchy denim being so ubiquitous now, old fashioned jeans are now both harder to find and more expensive.And I guess I don't want funky jeans enough to buy them pre-patched, either.