If you’re looking for a good quality inexpensive boot I got a pair of Premier Equine Mauritzio boots on sale last year and they have been great! They come in wide or regular, and the lace up fronts make them very adjustable. PE have other styles too: the Passagio is two tone like Sovereigns and £188
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Mine were purchased in 2017 or 2018 so would have been from roughly the same time period.
ETA That I had ordered another pair of MH (Venezia?) at one point because I wanted a pair of black Sovereigns but they were still newer to the market and I couldn’t find any used (and didn’t want to drop another several hundred on boots at the time). The black pair came and the leather was TERRIBLE. They were absolutely nothing like the Sovereigns (fit or quality) despite both being MH. Point being that those stories here about loving their MHs of a different/ mystery model could have a very different boot than the Sovereigns as MH has a wide range in type/ fit IME.
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The tragedy of modern consumer goods is twofold.
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Pretty much everything is getting worse quality year over year, even as prices go up.
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Within one company, one brand, even one model, there can be significant gaps in quality control. You can get a “bad batch” of something in one area with bad leather or workmanship that might not hold up over time. Or the fit can be off.
So the item or brand or model that you bought 5 years ago and were happy with might have really lost ground when you go to replace it. It makes it really hard to ask "how well does item xx last?’ because it isn’t the same year to year.
I follow a Youtube channel called Rose Anvil where a leather working fellow cuts up work boots and sneakers and analyzes their innards. He’s focused on men’s brands and has never done a horse riding boots, but it’s a good education on what should be inside shoes.
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Yes, the throw-away culture of consumer goods has 100% struck with riding boots. I’ve had better luck with the MH than Ariats, but they are not nearly as tough as they used to be, for sure. I have one pair of Sovereigns with a punched toe design that I keep for showing, along with a pair of customs that I don’t like as much as the Sovs. I have another pair that is a couple of years old and while I’ve had to replace the zipper on one, they are still in pretty good shape. These are my daily boots- two horses, 5-6 days a week- but I do take care of them.
It’s also worth looking around for used boots. I scored two pairs of used boots for cheap- one is the brown Sovereigns. They were almost new, less than half price- and even though I got caught in a deluge and had to wear them soaking wet for hours before I could attend to them, they’ve actually held up nicely. The other is an older pair of Ariat Monacos that are LOVELY, and I actually show in them, too, sometimes- thicker leather, really good quality. Of course, the zipper on one broke immediately (that always happens with me and Ariats), but I have a shoe repair guy that puts new ones in and reinforces the whole back seam, so they are going to last for a long time, I think.
I have a couple of friends who swear by the Tricolore- they event, so their boots get put through all sorts of weather, and they both really like them. One of them, my trainer, goes through boots like crazy and these have held up pretty well.
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