Discs have become irritatingly expensive. I understand tour series discs costing more to give the pros a cut but stock discs of any flavor of plastic should actually be a lot cheaper than when I started almost 20 years ago.
Mold materials have improved to offer more cycles before retooling is necessary, qc has improved and streamlined the packing and cool down to reduce the need for regrinding, automation is involved to speed up deburring cutting sprues and pick and place has sped up material handling, high production volumes has given rise to even bigger bulk orders of raw materials that should drive costs down drastically. Everything except the tool steel used in the molds and fuel to deliver the discs has gotten cheaper to make discs and yet they're still going up.
It used to cost 3.99 for base plastic discs at my gas station and that was when there were maybe 20k pdga members and sales volumes were probably 1/500th of what they are now.
That's not even factoring in my conspiracy theory that they are using much cheaper grade plastics than they used to as evidence in the lack of durability of modern premium plastic discs.
I'm still going to buy 25 dollar squishy star plastic halo discs though because they feel the best. I'll just complain about it online and enjoy throwing them on the course.