Most consumers just aren't willing to pay for quality any more.
Uh...huh..So that must explain why Wilson Combat waiting time is going on 24 months for a Supergrade. Les Baer is at 24+ weeks for anything ordered from him, Pistol Dynamics is at 36+ months, I'm at 24 months for a Bob Marvel gun, Joe Chambers is quoting end of 2014 for guns ordered today...
Yeah, consumers aren't willing to pay for quality - thank goodness for that. Just think what the wait times would be if more people were interested in high-quality, expensive guns!
I toured the Colt factory in 1984. Pythons were built in a separate room in the middle of the factory by four gunsmiths. Every gun was hand fitted just like a high-end 1911. My guess is that if they built the same gun today, it would be in the $3-$4K range. Not as much as a Korth, but certainly way more than a Smith.
You have to understand that when I toured the factory, the newest machine tools were probably 30 years old, and the CNC machines were crude retrofits of old machinery. Lots of the internal parts were stamped from roll steel, deburred, and then heat treated to the appropriate hardness.
The manufacturing was crude and relied on the gunsmiths to hand fit every single part on the gun. They had small bins of parts in front of them and they would pick-and-choose parts, trial fit them, try another part, trial fit it, etc. - and when the tolerance stacking was as close as they could get the fit, they would finish the assembly by hand fitting each part.
Now, if they took a totally different approach to the problem of building the Python, and redesigned it so all of the parts could be produced through CNC with minimal hand fitting - then you might be able to get the gun down to the $1500 range.