Indeed. I wanted to buy 'in-the-money' options not so long ago. When I did the math, I just decided to let it go and check for a cheaper stock.
* Buy 100 GOOG at $1000.
* Sell 1 Nov 16 $1050 Call.
Normally that would be a relatively low risk position, but you'd need $100,000 in GOOG underlying to cover it, which is a rather large amount for small investors to throw around even with margin accounts. And that's just for ONE option.
Edit: Oh, and if you thought $1000 is annoying to trade, check out Berkshire Hathaway:
https://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:BRK.A
$175,400 per share.
If you want to trade Berkshire Hathaway, you're supposed to trade the B shares -- not the A shares.
Berkshire A usually trades under a thousand shares per day. Even on a market-value basis, this is still much lower than the B shares.