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2" Titanium rod cost almost $400 per foot (source: McMaster-Carr). I'm certain that this artisan isn't buying small amounts of Ti rod, so is probably able to get that price down to only $325 per linear foot. I suspect (although am not certain) that this artisan mills all of his work by hand as opposed to having a CNC; by hand each shot glass is several hours of of work with dozens of separate steps. Any single mistake means that the shot glass gets thrown away. Hours of highly skilled labor, needing expensive machinery, on an expensive material = an expensive product.
If Mr. Hanko DOES have a CNC machine, it means he has hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in his shop, as well as highly skilled labor on an expensive material and should probably be priced even higher than MD has it here.
http://www.alibaba.com/showroom/titanium-ti-6al-4v.html This is the page i used to calculate the price. http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Supply-ASTM-B348-titanium-ti-6al_1887470003.html This is rod titanium i think,at least that is what it claims to be.
So can i say it would only cost him around 10 dollar of material(including wasted material)?
And i quote"Machined from 2” solid round 6AL-4V titanium, each shot glass features a polished finish over the distinct rifling pattern." So if you ask me i would say it is from CNC,and sure a product made from expensive machine would cost more but not by this much,and machines are invented to reduce the price for crafting in the 1st place.
Say they buy the titanium in 1ft bars, and cut them into 5 pieces, then machine one glass from each, that would be a materials cost of ~$80 a piece. Then as @Teufel said, errors can occur, and some of those $80 pieces will be thrown out or re-purposed.
Also, don't gauge the cost of the titanium on the weight of the final product, but the weight of the bar that it was machined from. Remember, these glasses are machined, not cast.