"good deal" and "fair price" , as i use them,, for most ONLY relates to what you get for what you pay. We can't see how much a vendors makes from selling an oil and think just because an oil is outrageously expensive its a bad deal amd the seller is fleecing us. That unfairly assumes that the cost of making or aquireing and then selling the oil is the end all be all of profit margins and that is absolutely NOT the case. Most, if not all of us have little idea of what our vendors cost to run a business us....some of those costs, like ageing where an oil sits on your shelf for 5-10 years , are hard to pin down. Im not saying that to the end user the oil may not be expensive, just that we should all remember there is a lot more costs involved with running an oud business than just the production costs. Just my opinion based on what I have learned over the years. Take it or leave it.
Some oils , irrespective of price (cheap or expensive ) are a fantastic deal and some are NOT. For example, some of the best deals are on SOME of the most expensive oils. If its distilled from sinking grade or near 100% sinking grade its TREMENDOUSLY costly for the distiller. Just think about the cost of sinking grade wood which is at an all time high (aside from one or two regions who are still not cheap) itcan go from, what is it these days $13/15 to $45?(i heard one guy was selling laosi sinkers for $75/g!) Even if the distiller picked that up at half off or a little better your still talking 6 or 7 grand to 20 something grand per kilo....and you can be pretty certain that to kick out s few tolas(sometimes only a few grams!) Your looking at several kilos of wood). At the end if the day only the cook knows the yeild but in any case its a tremendous financial gamble. You can theoretically do an average best to worst yeild ratio of several tola to several grams (that REALLY happens!) And get an idea of the best /worst case price of cost....but again none of this factors in SO many other expenses. I feel you get a better "deal ", if thats what your after, more often with the expensesive oil is because the oils net the seller the least...the only exception to that is when you have your own hunters that find some sick wood for you and you pay a fixed salery...but thats like finding a treasure at the end if a rainbow and selling it off on the cheap because you found it. Thats awfully charitable of you and you should probably go work for a NFP rather than run a FPO.
Point is that to apply a generalization of whether oils prices are "fair " , cheap, or
"Way overpriced " is quite difficult for me personally because in my mind from my knowledge "fair" and cheap or overpriced represent very different aspects of the cost of oud oils. For example hypothetically You could have a $100 bottle of oud be unfair if profit after all expenses is only $99. But a $4000 oil where the profit after all expenses is $500 would be very different. I personally would not throw $thousands of thousands upon thousands of $ into an investment with NO:
1. Trend indicators
2 . Mean reversion indicators
3. RSIs
4. Momentum indicators
5. Volume indicators
At least not any more!
Kudos for having the cahones to take the risk to those that do!