Its because Panini is fuggin greedy....It starts there,these retailers couldnt afford to gouge if Panini didnt do it first...$600 Optic hobby seems reasonable vs $1000 FOTL mosaic and yet its not...
Well, it's a Dutch auction so $1K is just the starting point. It'll go down at regular intervals until it sells out. I'm guessing the $500-700 range.
The distributors were the ones gouging us for the longest, not Panini. Prizm had an MSRP of $100-125 but the pre-order prices on Blowout, DA, etc. would be $350+. This was the year where Panini finally took out a piece of the pie for themselves. Why should all the money go to the distributors and breakers but not the ones creating the product? Their hand was forced. It'd be stupid to leave all that money on the table.
I remember last year's FOTL National Treasures was $750 and Blowout had a $2,100 reward before it even released if I remember right.
If the distributors didn't hoard supply, we wouldn't have this problem. Your local card shop will be lucky to get four boxes of Prizm but the big boys will have thousands (that they mark up of course).
I paid $175 for my Prizm this year from a local shop. He only charges a small mark up from what he pays (I think MSRP was $150 this year). It was already $400+ online at release.