Quote - I'm genuinely curious about this: what would be the advantage of so much
detail on such a small item?  Even when you have millions of dollars and
the best custom-made software, wouldn't you still want to keep the mesh
as light as possible to save a few seconds on each frame?

I'd think so, but there wasn't any accompanying description that I could find. For the intellectually curious (and bearing in mind that this is not a commercial endorsement of any kind) the item in question can be viewed here.

I ended up modeling one on my lunch break here at work, and I only used 336 polygons. I'm thinking it'll be a lot easier on my animation software.