I just meant in terms of price for a new card. JTMS peaked at $120 iirc, and that's $160 with inflation. I don't recall any card getting close to that in recent memory, not even ragavan. You're right that it's mediocre in commander.
prices are not bargain-basement.
There are definitely cards that cost a not-insignificant amount of money. But you don't need those specific cards to build a viable deck. Barely more than 10 rares in SNC are more than a dollar (5 of those being lands), with strong cards like
Rabble Rousing,
Brokers Ascendancy,
Extraction Specialist,
Ziatora's Envoy.
Evelyn, the Covetous,
Depopulate,
Maestros Ascendancy,
Endless Detour all below a buck, and that's not even looking at commons and uncommons. And there's only a couple mythics above $5, and mostly ones that are mediocre in commander. And older sets are even cheaper, especially once they rotate. You could buy a precon off the shelf, throw a handful of good dollar rares in there, and have a perfectly viable deck in the vast majority of play spaces.
People get hung up on not being able to afford specific cards. If this was a competitive format, that could be an issue, but it's not, and it isn't. Just play other cards. That's what you did before they were printed. Unless you're actually unable to keep pace with your playgroup, it's not a terribly serious issue imo. There have been thousands of strong commander cards in the past few years. The vast majority are plenty affordable. And the ones that aren't will probably get reprinted eventually.
In other formats you actually need specific cards to compete, 1v1 means you need to match power level much more closely to win, and you need 4x cards which are usually far more expensive than commander cards. I can understand people complaining about costs in those formats, but for commander? C'mon. You want to play with the shiny toys, which is fair, so do I, but you don't need them to compete. Don't make it sound like a bigger problem than it is. The minimum price to buy in hasn't really changed by much.