I wholeheartedly agree that one can get by with spending little money and come away with a good knife. Companies like Frosts, Opinel, Victorinox, Camillus, Buck and others prove that axiom daily.
However, there are some things in a knife one just can't get without paying the coin. I will just throw out some examples:
This is a Bark River Knife & Tool Gameskeeper. It is a 4.5 inch full tang drop point hunter. The three I have are the sharpest production knives I have ever encountered.
You can't get A2 steel in an inexpensive knife. Nor can one generally get a decent convex grind, nor handle options numbering in the dozens just by emailing before a production run. These things cost money and for a customized production knife like a BRKT one will pay between $60-$400 depending on the model and the options. My favorite one cost $135.00
Now here is what I would call an example of a "user friendly custom:"
Mountain Hollow Knives
At $300.00 what one is getting here is something unique, but not so expensive that one should be afraid to use it. The spring steel used in the above knife is not a "supersteel," but it will benefit from the maker's attention to detail. Will it do anything a fixed blade Buck won't? Perhaps. These types of knives are generally more forgiving of being torqued into possibly bending, snapping, or other material mishaps than a factory run of blades made of an cheaper or more brittle steel and heat treated in a mass produced way. What you get at the hunting camp is envy, and when you think about how long the knife will likely last, you didn't pay too much.
And then of course, customs take off into the stratosphere from the price point of the one above. I have some trouble justifying to myself paying as much for a knife as for a gun, but I get over it. Where $500.00 at the gun shop buys me an anonymous lump of polymer and steel that just has to be fed, a knife of equivalent value is already a joy forever during my lifetime and as an heirloom for my son if it is a collector, or if it is a user, something that
was made just for me and no one else. You just can't get that in a gun without dropping many more dollars in most cases.
). A good 3-5 in fixed blade (notice how the frosts and the 116 fall into that category) handles more field/game choirs than most other knives. The sharpend rail ties and pointy pry bars become specialty tools that serve their particular use particulary well, but lack the general utility of the 3-5 in blade.
BTW Gurps may be cool to the chicks, but I.C.E. Iron Crown fis or real men 
