The forks that seem to have jumped in price the most are long (130-160mm) travel jobbies with adjustable travel and thru-axles, particularly the new 15mm. So I guess it's partly the cost of re-tooling, R&D etc for these new lightweight uppy downy bolt-through designs, and partly the fact that many fairly average riders (myself included) are convinced that they need them.

Everything costs what people will pay

Exactly !
Always get the occasional "why does XYZ cost so much" thread with the same moans'n'groans, but it doesn't stop people clicking the 'add to basket' button…….

but do they?

i don't, i'd love some new coil lyriks, but i am not going to pay over £700 for what i consider a basic coil fork that 18months ago i could of bought for around £400 <kicks myself>

i dont think they are super expensive…
for the level of attention to detail etc.

MX forks cost a fortune, and the servicing/revavling costs are out of this world.

Been thinking about some new long travel forks for a while. I just can't justify spending the kind of money they go for.

They are way over priced, especially above 140mm travel.

Fair enough paying for latest super air sprung damping tunable travel adjust must have, but even the simple coil models with just pre-load and rebound are too expensive if you ask me.

I'm guessing they are priced at what they think people will pay. Simple as.

It’s like anything on MTBs, at the top end of the market it’s a numbers and letters games, how much travel, how fat the stanchions can get, how low the weight figure is and how many made up acronyms can the marketing Dept’ splash all over the spec sheet…

Mid price point and down it’s just “trickle down” Look further down the ranges and you’ll see the forks of yesteryear with the odd change to spec’s and name but effectively the same chassis with similar internals, how far honestly is the current “Tora” from the “Psylo” you could buy 6 years ago? The “dart” is more or less an old “Judy” sure they’ve had to re-tool the crown and lowers thus subtly changing the look of the forks and fiddle about a tad with travel but they aren’t a million miles apart from the forks you would have thrown hundreds of pounds at less than a decade ago…

There haven’t been that many leaps forward in fork Technology, over the last 20 years merely scaling up of the chassis to accommodate more travel and extreme use in the field…
Maybe more reliable air springs in the last 5 or so years, possibly manufacturers have a better idea of what the damping is actually doing…

At the end of the day they are basically still just some type of spring, a bit of oil, a pumping rod and some form of valve in a tube (x 2)…

As for the idea that they don’t last, well that’s just cobblers, they may get sold on, a few may get snapped but the vast majority will be floating about in the classifieds/eBay for some time to come and those of us that bother to service forks ourselves can get most things to keep running for years, for those over burdened with money there’s the shiny new version of any given fork, not significantly different from the previous revision, but the man in the shop; he said it’s Waaaay better…

I bet downgrading a particular fork to remove adjustable this & that actually costs them more. Your having to stock more components, validate more versions of the finished product etc, along with all the other costs in putting the product on the market. Offering just a single variant would reduce component costs, logistics etc.

the minor changes in spec they use to differentiate and structure a product range are a joke too. Changing from a steel to an aluminium steerer adds £100 to the RRP of a fork with negligible manufacturing or material cost difference.

The fork manufacturers want it both ways but the free market wont let them. They want to dominate the OE sector buy offering bike manufacturers bulk discount whilst selling similar products at massive mark-ups to the retail customer. Then they get upset when the bike manufacturers dump their excess stock on the mail order market when another brand becomes the must-have. Years ago in the US I bought new forks from mailorder giant supergo for less than Manitou would sell me some new lowers direct when mine cracked.

I'm a fan of basic, durable marzocchis. A pair of 1999 Z3's of mine are still in regular use with just oil changes (original seals and bushes) and I've just got some 55R's (with all the unreliable adjustable gubbins removed to produce a bottom of the range but reliable fork) which I'm hoping will last as long.