I'm certainly priced out of that end of the market. The music business hasn't gotten any easier, that's for sure.
And yet there's still a multi-year waiting list for lots of these custom guitars. Go figure.
But it's all about demand, and if someone can make more dough, more power to 'em.
My feeling is that we're in a golden age of wooden instrument builders and manufacturers, kind of like the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Cremona (Incidentally, Stradivari also made guitars). If so, these instruments will be heirlooms down the road, and they certainly won't get any cheaper.
There are a lot of wealthy collectors who don't mind the prices, but there are also lots of professionals who think of their instruments as lifetime investments. My friend is one of the latter. He only has a few guitars, even though he's pretty big-time.
I know symphony players who have taken out mortgages on their classic, old instruments in order to buy them. It's not unusual in the classical music world, where lots of the instruments cost the price of a nice house.
I guess it's all a matter of how much money you can plunk down, and/or how much you can earn with the instrument in your hands. It's all about context.