Warhammer is so much fun but the pieces are just so ridiculously expensive. Especially Warhammer Fantasy which has races that can require a hundred individual units to field a 2000 point army.
Yes $150 isn’t cheap but it’s not $1500.
That's comparable to a high quality board game, computer game, Lego set etc.
I wouldn't consider one unless I had a garage or shed, and no children.
Others just fish for foil cards, which apparently are measurably heavier than normal ones and with a precision scale it's possible to tell whether a booster has one.
I'm not a collector, so I stopped buying them when power creep rendered a second deck of mine useless already.
I don't think it's even reliable that the point-for-point best units are the most financially expensive ones. With 40k, i believe the most expensive stuff is often obscure Forge World models that usually have terrible rules.
For example, my friends and I play Pauper [0]. A format where only common cards are allowed. You can get a strong on-meta deck for between USD24-USD90. It has a huge card pool going almost back to the beginning, so you can build really nice decks!
Even in USD1000 formats like Modern or Pioneer. There are "cheaper" decks like 8-Whack, or Mono-blue Tempo respectively. I think around USD100.
GW’s minis are expensive but they are good, fantastic even. They don’t have a monopoly, several other companies also sell very good minis, but injection moulding is expensive so scale matters here.
So sure, printed minis are better than Warhammer minis from 20 years ago, but none come anywhere near the good recent ones. The main thing going for printed minis apart from price is that it’s easier to have different poses and add some variety.
Also, a lot of people play games hosted in GW stores, and i believe GW have a policy that you can only use their minis in their stores.