Hmmm. I can easily see Prusa accidentally bidding against their own sourcing and driving up prices like that, but mostly because some of their component choices

Hmmm. I can easily see Prusa accidentally bidding against their own sourcing and driving up prices like that, but mostly because some of their component choices were unusual compared to the rest of the market. For example, pretty much all of the cheap i3-inspired 3D printers coming out of China switched to 32-bit controller boards years ago, but Prusa stuck with the Atmega 2560 until basically last week. That's kind of a niche part and the entire Atmega range was in short supply globally for a good while during the pandemic. With the way supply chains have been, they could easily have ended up being a huge chunk of the market trying to buy that or similarly unusual parts through brokers at some points.