Well, there is the point Floid made. Have you considered the possibility that some of this "rip off pricing" has been to genereate R&D funds for things like the KickFlash, Delfina Flipper, and the Catweasel Mk3?
Think of it this way. Inititially the $120 price tag is intended to cover all costs (R&D, QA, manufacturing, support) to produce the board, plus a small profit. After a while, Jens recoups his R&D on the card itself and the demand is sufficient that he can produce card in larger lots and reduce manfucaturing costs (though manufacturing will probaly go up as the market it saturated). He could slash the price of the card and pass the savings on to the consumer... But his consumers keep pestering him for a PCI version of his Catweasel card. The problem is, he has no where near the money it would take for the R&D of such a card... So what is he to do, keep the price of the Catweasel at $120 and use the funds it generates to work on the Catweasel Mk3. As an offshoot, the Flipper interface designed for the Catweasel can now be incorporated into other products (i.e Delfina Flipper), effectively reducing their cost.
Oh and one last thought. Jens isn't the only one that sets the price of his products. You have to consider the retail markup as well. Take for example the DICE C compiler... It was released as freeware a while back, but at least one retailer has it listed for $90 on their site. Granted, they probably spent quite a bit for it when it was still a commercial product. But can you really justify that price for media and a bound manual?
