Man I was just thinking about this the other day. If a figure was $200 four years ago, estimating inflation effect, it should be about $216 now. Throw in the increased cost of materials, labor, improved quality, licensing, etc, and I can see where Hot Toys and Sideshow would need to increase prices even further. That said, at this rate, you are starting to price out your customer base that can afford these figures... Oh well. God bless credit card debt.
I think the prices of sideshow are high but the bigger issue is the huge edition size with the high price. If there's size shrinks the price seems more reasonable