Even accounting for inflation, that's under $2700 today.
And the only reason my 2008 is still "workable" is because I used a third-party tool to enable me to run a recent macOS installer. Apple's official macOS installer refuses to update a 2008 Mac Pro beyond OS 10.11 (El Cap, 2015), even though the hardware is perfectly capable of running newer versions.
Even accounting for inflation, that's under $2700 today.
And the only reason my 2008 is still "workable" is because I used a third-party tool to enable me to run a recent macOS installer. Apple's official macOS installer refuses to update a 2008 Mac Pro beyond OS 10.11 (El Cap, 2015), even though the hardware is perfectly capable of running newer versions.