Pinnacle/IBC blades

I have at least two of every brand of irons that make a lot of A2s, including the IBC.

The selling point of the IBCs is their level of finish, they are flat and honed when you get them. If you have a working iron in a plane already that is A2 and made by a good maker, they are not an improvement, they are a lateral move - like replacing coke with pepsi thinking you might be getting Crown Royal.  

All A2 irons of similar hardness from Hock, LV, IBC, Lie Nielsen all are similar in durability - there is no magic bean that makes one last twice as long as another.

LN and LV irons are of superb quality, and very consistent. The only literature/spec difference that I can recall is that the LV irons may not be cryo treated. In reality, if there is a difference in durability because of it, you won't be able to tell based on use and how often you have to sharpen. Maybe if you counted strokes, I don't know, but in my opinion, cryo treating has more to do with product differentiation than material performance improvement to someone who is using their tools to do projects.

But I can say definitively after counting strokes with some A2 irons (never do that again) that there is no reason to prefer one brand over another for durability reasons - pick on price and prep level - they all last a ridiculously long time in domestic wood, and a ridiculously short time in sparkly cocobolo.  

Caveat to any woodworker who feels that getting a honed iron is a big benefit - even in the days of vacuum heat treat ovens, my experience with new A2 irons is that they still suffer from chipout for the first bit of the iron, so you may have a freshly honed iron that you get new and find lines in your work in very short order. This effect in a proper iron should disappear after you've honed it a handful of times or gotten past the first primary grind. Of the probably 20 or 30 A2 irons I have, i have not seen it persist past the second re-grind of the primary, and usually not past the first.