Basically the rest of us buying at the 1.99 BTC price got royally screwed? What a scam, production price is apparently not NEARLY 2 BTC, probably not even 0.5 lol.
of course
Avalons, which were break even in production costs: ~$1300 @ 60GH/s
Block Erupter USB @ 2BTC: ~$35000 @ 60GH/s
Block Erupter USB @ 0.89BTC: ~$16000 @ 60 GH/s
It was expensive back then, it is expensive now. It is the buyer's fault if you didn't do basic math.
I would be surprised if, excluding R&D, this costs $10 each to build and ship. Even at that price it still has way too much overhead (BOM) per hashing speed, so it is hard to think one can have a good deal anytime if a USB miner isn't at least hashing @ 5-10GH/s.