"Seeing is believing" - It's also expensive!

Which one of these is the same as the others?
Answer is:- "None of the above!" 
But you're looking at $1,660 worth of vision products here, with my former prescription and its broken temples frames on the left, ($760) and the latest new ones ($900.) on the right. They all brag 'space-age metal frames' - Yeah, Sure! so's my ass! And they both have progressives lenses with Transitions option for automatic 'sunglasses', and they both have the Crizal coatings made famous by Essilor. So what's the difference, really? About $140, plus the updated prescription to tweak the settings for my right eye, which has been deteriorating slightly faster than the left one during the past five or six years.
These new ones, according to Doctor Debbie, and she should know, give me slightly better than 20/20 vision, which just proves that keeping the same Optometrist from when you first got prescription glasses away back when really pays off in the long run. The technology has improved wonderfully since the early 1980s, and Debra has polished her skills with time too, and the result is that nobody does it better. Want proof? I can spot a pretty gal from just as far away right now as I could in 1980! And it doesn't get any better than that!

So what's with all that plastic tubing on them, then? I'm so glad you asked! And I am happy to explain - it's an "instant repair" for a broken temple on the frame
above left. It worked so well, I went back for more tubing when I got the new ones, because using this idea I've discovered makes the glasses practically automatically self-aligning, and if the loop of tubing is cut the exact right length then there's no way you're going to lose your glasses or have to keep pushing them back up your nose to get the lenses close enough to your eyes for the correct optics relationships to your eyeballs. And for those who aren't aware of it, my spies tell me that with progressives lenses, the closer you can keep them
to your eyes, the better they work for you. And a note here: the newer ones have a whole other thing going on with their 'keyholes' of magnification now, and those have been modified and widened for smoother transitions from top to bottom and side to side. So it's even easier now to go around looking for your glasses while not realizing you're still wearing the little beauties! And we've all done that at least once.....