>I’ve noticed the local “free range fancy chicken eggs” have remained $4 since two years ago but the cheap eggs have gone from a Buck (sometimes 50 cents on sale) to almost the same $4.

I noticed this too and stared buying the free range eggs again (used to get these all the time for my ramen eggs). There's definitely a difference but I don't go through enough eggs or cook them in a way that I typically care (no time to prep ramen and therefor nitamgo anymore).

Check again. Our rich person eggs are 9.99, spent years around 4.99.

We'll know it's really bad when grocery stores start selling "singles" - individual eggs.

At that price, I would seldom buy eggs.

The only difference I've ever noticed is that the more organic or free-range an egg claims to be, the more likely it is to have defects like blood inclusions. If I don't know where the egg came from, the actual taste isn't distinguishable. Yolk color is easily manipulated and means nothing.

The only difference I notice is in the white which seems to have more protein from the cage free eggs. It's usually not too noticeable to me except with hard and soft boiled eggs where the egg white just seems more dense/thicker. I use these for my soft boiled marinated eggs so there's more white to absorb my marinate goodness.

Single data point: a rural egg seller on the washington peninsula just raised their prices from $4->$5 per dozen because their feed costs recently doubled.

Yep, lots of price changes will happen and apparently random intervals as contracts and prices expire. Some farms will be almost entirely isolated from much of it (if they grow their own feed corn for the chickens it could be a year or two) others will be affected immediately.