You're lucky at only 2x the cost. Every other place I've asked for quotes of my modes has come back at TEN times the cost!
You've asked a tricky question: You have to balance the "worth" of an item versus it's (total) cost, plus consider that over time, "everything gets cheaper".
a) If you needed one and could print a new kidney, would that be worth more than $0.01 per cm3 to you?
b) You can go to Hallmark and buy a greeting card that plays music for $5. The processor inside that card has more processing power than the computer that took us to the MOON.
Consider this model:
https://shpws.me/lONM
Is it "worth" $25? That's a subjective decision. I could go pickup a raw gypsum rock for free, so $25 is "expensive". But, it'd cost me hundreds of hours of labor to turn it into what comes out of the Shapeways printer, so it's "cheap". That model if mass-produced would probably cost $2, but no one IS mass-producing them, and they're not available elsewhere. The items that
are available in this specific size are poorer quality and more expensive. So, from an overall "worth" proposition, the items I can produce here at Shapeways have value to me.
I am
not privy to Shapeways internal pricing decisions. My sense is that over time (3-4 years), as their total volume goes up, they MAY be able to reduce the price of items.