Also, if you all think that $1000+ for a figure like this is expensive then all of you have a lot to learn about collectables :b Just ask my cousin and his WoW figures.
Not necessarily. Some fancy collectibles can be less than 1000 dollars. I see some collectible statues of Legend of Zelda for around 100-200 bucks at conventions and they even look really well crafted too. Perhaps rare items like this R&C statue can be more than 1000 dollars.
But you're right about one thing though… collectibles are pretty expensive, no matter what.
Ah yes, I've seen the Legend of Zelda figures - Which were sold to the public at a price of $200 on release. The key phrases there are 'Public' and 'On Release'. I know of the figures you're talking about from around 2006. Whoever owns them will be sitting on a small fortune, the larger figures will sell for around £600 British Pounds. (about £100 less than the R&C Maquette).
Its like my GF and her Starcraft figures - $7 in the shops when they were released to the public but now they go for almost $500 each! Or my Sam & Max limited Surfing the Highway hard-back comic book. I know the 1996 edition of Surfing the Highway goes for nearly £200, they were only £15 on release! The very first 1995 edition goes for even more!
Now lets look at the R&C Maquette;
Never released to the public, tiny tiny tiny number of them were made (in the grand scheme of things, 500 is not a lot at all), its a proper Maquette Statuette which cost thousands to make (The original sculptor on dA said around $2500 to make just one - I'll hunt for his user name and grab the strong of comments me and him had), gigantic and weighs a tonne! It sells for £700 British Pounds each time one of them pops up somewhere - for a figure like that, £700 is not bad. Still a kick in the teeth but not bad.
I bid on one of these a while ago and was outbid at the last second!
It ended at $1150 and I bid $960 :/
Was gutted! D:
Also, if you all think that $1000+ for a figure like this is expensive then all of you have a lot to learn about collectables :b Just ask my cousin and his WoW figures.
Why would you want to spend that much? Just because you're a fan of R&C it doesn't mean you need to spend a thousand bucks on a statue, unless you're an insane fan (like me 
) or havbbe money to burn.
I just have a magical invention called a credit-card and a year to pay said credit card - then we have the savings account I've never touched since I was 14 (which now has enough money to buy 5 of those figures) and a high interest current account - Its called FINANCES people. Am I rich? Hell no! I'm a student who works in McDonalds! I just happen to be great with numbers 
In British Pounds it goes for around £700 each time, which is not bad for a statue like that. See the reply just above I left TipsyMcBee for the rest of the explanation :P
This reason why I say '1000+ is not bad' is because in US Dollars they always seem to go over a thousand because of the crappy exchange rate against the dollar. Right now its £1.5 to $1
