I've recently visited the aerospace smithsonian and they had an exhibit on the wright brothers. I'd known about their prior careers as bicycle makers and repairers, but the thing that really grabbed my attention was the price. For a single speed, bare bones tube design they were charging (when adjusted for inflation) around 1500 dollars. Now a comparable bike costs maybe a 10th that.

Essentially handmade bikes cost 2-5x more than $1500 now. $150 will buy you a Wallmart piece of junk. A utility bike suitable for bombing around a city is going to cost somewhere around $1000. I own three that each have a > $2K replacement cost, even with me building the wheels and installing everything but the bottom bracket. Yep you can easily spend more than $1500 for a single speed bare bones bike, and the people that build them have waiting lists years long.

At least in the UK, you can get decent enough bikes from Decathlon for about £300 (including our 20% tax). Double that and you'll open up a lot of options, including entry-level Dutch bikes.

I rode a £250 Triban in London for 7 years until I sold it recently for an e-bike. It's not handmade, but it's a solid bicycle. I did have to upgrade the tyres to Schwalbe Marathon Plus, though, to stop the punctures.

A good bike today costs about half or maybe a third that, not a 10th. You can buy bikes for a 10th (many do), but they are low quality bikes that are 10th the price, but the quality is lacking. If you want a bike made by hand the way the wright brothers did it would be far more than that price (but the only people doing that are serious racers who demand much high quality and other custom things so I'm not sure this is fair)

I said a /comparable/ bike, single speed, steel tubing, medium precision chaining and teeth on the gear.

A similar price will get you a wildly superior bike the likes of which was well beyond their craft, quite serviceable pedal assist bikes are selling for under a thousand these days.

Penny-farthings were expensive. They were the equivalent of $3000+ bikes today which are primarily only purchased by enthusiasts with sufficient disposable income.