Why does nobody talk about how much a cheap moisture meter changed my glue ups

I always figured a $25 pin meter from the big box store was a toy compared to the fancy ones the old timers talk about, so I never bothered and just went by feel on every panel glue up. Bought one anyway back in March because I had a run of maple tops cupping on me and I was out of ideas. First board I stuck it in read 14 percent and I wanted to argue with the thing, but I let that stock sit in the shop another 2 weeks and it dropped to 8. Glued up 6 panels after that and not one has moved a hair, where before I was getting a call back on almost every table. The part that got me is two of the boards that felt bone dry to my hand were the wettest ones in the stack, so whatever my palm was telling me was straight up wrong. Skip the pin meters if you want, but the $25 one saved me more in redone tops than I paid for it 10 times over. Anyone else have a cheap tool that embarrassed the nice stuff, or am I the only one who waited this long to check moisture before glue up?