Oh, FWIW, I'd recommend that you find your favorite sized chisel, and buy the best one you can justify in that size.
I used to be a bottom feeder, until I started trying Stan's recommendations....what a difference!
You may also want to check in with Stan too. While he has great taste and some of the tools are pretty spendy, he also knows a few "bang for the buck" smiths that make a good, honest, not fancy chisel. The ones that he got me are dermatome sharp, stay sharp, and are a pleasure to use...no mokume, not a hollywood famous smith, but a very well made chisel.
If you want to keep checking ebay, you might want to follow kanomiya (iida tools). He has good stuff and is honest in his dealings.
I got the backs done today. Some interesting things:
I needed to remove quite a bit of metal. A little work with the hand crank grinder, a lot of work with the dmt extra coarse then up through the grits in diamond to 3000, completely removing the previous scratch pattern. From there I played a bit with natural stones, arks and coticules but not too effective with that hard Steel. Sooo..... break out the synthetic waterstones. I'm not a big Fan, but with careful discipline about grit contamination I went through the Norton progression from 4000 to 12000. At 12000 the dmt extra coarse pattern showed back up. It had been gone from the time I went to 600 diamond. Fortunately I was able to polish it out at 12000 though it took a little extra time on the stones. I guess coarse diamond scratches propagate down below the surface of the steel or something. Interesting.
Bevels are next. Is there a consensus regarding optimum angles for flat bevel laminated Japanese chisels for use in North American domestic hardwoods?