Why are speaker stands so expensive?!

At the risk of opening myself up to ridicule I bought Rockville stands for my many pairs of bookshelf speakers. They were dirt cheap and doing admirable job after a few cheap modifications. I filled the posts to the top with rice and applied a layer of dynamat to the platforms. Even my bottom ported Sonus Faber sound excellent on them and they are aesthetically decent as well

For metal stands, Monoprice quad-post stands were highly recommended.  The only complaint I had is the small top plates.  For wood stands, Rockville stands have a good value proposition. Two-tone wood stands (RHT or SS series) are in imparticular simplistic and appealing in looks imo. It comes with two sizes of top plates (7"x9.25" & 9.25"x11.8") )for accommodating different sizes of bookshelfs that I found handy.  However, if you choose wood stands, two extra treatments are highly recommended. First, fill sands in the post up to 75-85% high (to enhance its SQ but keep the center gravity reasonably low). Second, place proper "decoupler" between the bookshelfs and top plates to reduce possible resonance to the minimum. For that, I found drum dampener gel/pad are one of the best decouplers . It will help keep the speakers stablized on the stands too.

I purchased a pair of Lovan steel speaker stands that were approx 28" high from audio Advisor that looked and were just as well built as Sound Anchor stands. 

Granted this was about 12 years ago and prices have definitely gone up, but I got these stands for $50 new. They were originally $80, but were on sale at the time.

I've noticed many speaker companies that make stand mount loudspeakers at exorbitant prices sell the matching stands for equally exorbitant prices. And naturally, they say their expensive stands are required for optimum performance. I haven't examined a whole lot of these expensive stands, but my opinion is they aren't worth their price tags.

My 2 cents worth.

they are expensive and ugly.  It's like wheels in the Mercedes dealership, they will cost more because the buyers have money. You can buy 200 dollar chairs with prettier and sturdier legs than those ugly 600 dollar speaker stands

I used to think Spendor's stands were just plain stupid expensive.  Until I tried them.  I was using some typical sand filled square column B&W's before.  I had no idea how really good the little Spendors were until I tried these.  The difference was not subtle.