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Preserve Your Games with the Open Source Cartridge Reader
(www.retronews.com)
Vintage gaming community.
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Yeah, this is pretty standard. Between the low production numbers and the fact that assembly is probably occurring in a country with stronger labor laws than wherever mass-producted hardware is made (mostly China), it's going to cost more than something you can pick up on Amazon or AliExpress.
There have been a few cases where open-source hardware like this has enough demand to get picked up by a Chinese manufacturer who makes a cheaper version through some combo of unethical labor practices, production scale, employing cheaper or cloned parts and/or dropping features, so it's not out of the question that a cheaper version comes along, as long as you don't mind the compromises to get it.