analogvm, With respect to your question, my response is, "You and me both". There is a story about Abraham Lincoln, who was a surveyor before he went into politics. He billed one of his customers the sum of $300 for surveying a property. The customer asked Abe how a few sticks placed in the ground could possibly cost so much. To which Abe is said to have responded, "Two dollars for markers; $298 for knowing where to place markers." (I probably have the numbers wrong, because $300 does sound like a lot of money for the cost of surveying a property in the mid-1800s.)
The point is that the buyer has to believe the designer put some "secret sauce" into his most expensive cartridges that is omitted from the lesser models in the line. You are paying that invisible but hopefully audible difference. If you notice, often the most expensive models are a different color from the lesser ones, and usually they sport exotic cantilevers and styli. Inside, there may be a more exotic magnet or more magnets or silver coil vs copper, etc. (By the way, all reviewers of the UNIverse line early on said that the low output models with copper coils were the best sounding, better than the silver coiled versions. So of course I bought a low output/copper. But my original UNI "only" cost $5K when new.) We all know that the most expensive cartridges are built from parts purchased from a supplier and that the cost of a tiny piece of machined boron cannot be much more than the cost of a tiny piece of machined aluminum, etc. Certainly the cost of all these tweaks taken together is not 5-10 times more than the basic parts cost, which is typically the multiplier to use when comparing the cost of the bottom of any makers line of cartridges to the top of that line. But that takes us back to the story about Abe Lincoln; the designer's brainpower is on sale.
The point is that the buyer has to believe the designer put some "secret sauce" into his most expensive cartridges that is omitted from the lesser models in the line. You are paying that invisible but hopefully audible difference. If you notice, often the most expensive models are a different color from the lesser ones, and usually they sport exotic cantilevers and styli. Inside, there may be a more exotic magnet or more magnets or silver coil vs copper, etc. (By the way, all reviewers of the UNIverse line early on said that the low output models with copper coils were the best sounding, better than the silver coiled versions. So of course I bought a low output/copper. But my original UNI "only" cost $5K when new.) We all know that the most expensive cartridges are built from parts purchased from a supplier and that the cost of a tiny piece of machined boron cannot be much more than the cost of a tiny piece of machined aluminum, etc. Certainly the cost of all these tweaks taken together is not 5-10 times more than the basic parts cost, which is typically the multiplier to use when comparing the cost of the bottom of any makers line of cartridges to the top of that line. But that takes us back to the story about Abe Lincoln; the designer's brainpower is on sale.