What's up with Avirex A2 desirability ?

[TLW '90]

By most accounts I can find the Avirex A2's are said to be mediocre and the Coopers to be better as well as actually being a USGI contracted item, but for some reason the Avirex A2's tend to command often 2x more than the Coopers on Ebay and It has me wondering why.

Is Avirex just a brand for Civilian A2's that a lot of people are familiar with or something?
Was the Avirex specifically used in a movie or something?

 

[thor]

Avirex was making good quality military flight jacket repro’s back in the 1970’s and 80’s (before the market exploded with so many manufacturers with varying degrees of quality and authenticity). Sadly Avirex quality went downhill in the succeeding years before the company morphed into CockpitUSA.
“Vintage” Avirex A-2’s are a nice mid-level quality jacket and they still have name recognition among many fans in the U.S.
For a time Avirex did in fact have government contracts for USAF A-2’s (early 2000’s I think).

 

[TLW '90]

Avirex was making good quality military flight jacket repro’s back in the 1970’s and 80’s (before the market exploded with so many manufacturers with varying degrees of quality and authenticity). Sadly Avirex quality went downhill in the succeeding years before the company morphed into CockpitUSA.
“Vintage” Avirex A-2’s are a nice mid-level quality jacket and they still have name recognition among many fans in the U.S.
For a time Avirex did in fact have government contracts for USAF A-2’s (early 2000’s I think).

Thank you for the info.

I may have been a victim of opinions from people judging Avirex solely based on bad versions.
It's easy to forget that a lot of people have specific standards for them, and it seems that many A2's will get a bad rap for not fitting like or closely resembling a ww2 example even if objectively decent otherwise.
In my research before eventually shifting my sights to and scoring a Cooper, I wasn't finding a lot of discussion regarding whether they had an objectively good general fit regardless of WW2 accuracy.

I think it was also easy for me to believe what I heard about Avirex A2's because I was originally looking for lighter shade of brown which may not have been available in the better era, so I was mostly finding unappealing examples.

 

[4444Design]

I second the statement of @thor - as per my understanding the times of AVIREX producing "reproductions" is long gone - they turned to produce "interpretations" of historic jackets with some absolutely NOT authentic features ...

there is a community of AVIREX collectors but not for purists

 

[LeatherHunter]

I picked up an Avirex A-2 last year and it was a good quality jacket. It was made from their hand burnished sheep but I was looking for a cow hide So I moved it along.