At the end of last month, my friend Doug Wreden held his annual charity event for the Monterey Bay Aquarium Foundation to raise funds for ocean conservation. The stretch goal for raising half a million dollars, inspired by an inside joke from a prior live broadcast he had done, was for him and me to go to New Zealand to purchase cologne and visit the aquarium.

The fundraising event was a huge success, raising US$625,376.68 this year and elevating his all-time total to over a million dollars. At the end of the two-day event, I knew that we would be going to New Zealand, so I slowly began making preparations.

I was born in the United States and have only gone out of the country once when I road tripped into Canada, so this will be my first real international trip beyond North America. I thought about what I would need to buy to get ready to travel abroad. I realized that the only luggage I have is carry-on-sized, and I figured that I would need to purchase something bigger.

I started conducting some research on the best luggages available on the market, and the rabbit hole led me to brands like LuggageWorks and Briggs and Riley that are often used and endorsed by pilots, as well as manufacturers like Rimowa and Tumi that market themselves as luxury brands. However, one particular company caught my eye… Victorinox.

Victorinox is the original maker of the Swiss army knife. I browsed their travel gear selection and became interested in their metallic red Spectra 3.0 expandable medium case. I travel a lot and have seen some red luggages, but never one of this deep red tone and shade, so the idea of having a visually unique and distinct luggage was appealing to me.

Additionally, the Spectra 3.0 line is made out of SORPLAS™, a high-performance polycarbonate by Sony Semiconductor Solutions Corporation. This means that, even though the luggage has a metallic look, it’s actually made from a proprietary plastic, so it’s more resistant to dents and other surface-warping damage than real metal would be, as well as bearing a handful of other features (though I guess a downside of that is that it would no longer develop a patina over time that I usually like to see on my belongings).

It definitely wasn’t cheap, though—the price tag was US$650.00 before tax, which wasn’t the most expensive luggage I looked at, but still a sizable chunk of money. After consideration, I decided I would test out a cheaper version of the Spectra 3.0 before committing to the more expensive one, so I bought the Spectra 3.0 expandable cabin case, sized as standard carry-on luggage, for US$575.00.

After its arrival, I tested it out by unzipping everything, checking out all the pockets, rolling it around a bit, and inspecting all the components. The color was just as nice in-person as I expected from the photos on Victorinox’s website, the build quality seemed pretty good, and I was overall satisfied with my purchase. I concluded that the Spectra 3.0 line was good enough that I was comfortable committing to the more expensive and larger checked bag, so I put in an order for the medium case too.

After a short wait, the expandable medium case also arrived. The quality was consistent with the smaller carry-on luggage, in that everything was good and I was satisfied with my purchase.

Moments later, I got stunlocked for a good minute or so while I came to two epiphanies:

1. The size of your luggage has nothing to do with international travel. Just because you travel internationally does not mean you have to bring a checked bag. The thing that determines the size of luggage you should bring is the duration of your trip, not the location of your destination. A single carry-on bag has plenty of space for me to pack a week and a half’s worth of belongings.

2. It makes absolutely no sense to purchase a similar smaller item to “test out” a larger version of that item. This would be reasonable if you buy an item, retain all its original packaging, and test it out during its return period with the expectation that you would send it back for a refund if it did not meet your quality bar. Buying a different item as a test product, buying the actually-desired item days later, then trashing all the packaging on both products is… incorrect.

So anyway, I am now the somewhat proud but mostly confused owner of two new Victorinox Spectra 3.0 luggages that I don’t actually need.