I have a weird fascination with fonts. They're pleasing to look at, and interesting to compare. But come on. At the end of the day, pretty much 95+% of contemporary fonts are trivial little tweaks to Garamond, Baskerville, Helvetica, Century, or some other font that hasn't been novel for centuries.
What people are paying for are the most subtle of cues, to make their text subconsciously distinguishable from the next magazine or marketing campaign. For a few years, until the new font becomes old-hat or commonplace, and needs to be revamped again to keep your brand subconsciously fresh.
Obviously there is commercial value in this, or else people wouldn't pay the amounts that they pay for fonts. But I don't understand why we lionize font designers the way the we do.