Bitmain has come before with new and exclusive miners but at a reasonable price range (at least in the recent past).12K? Is bitmain copying evil from other companies in the rare cases they were better at it?
I suspect they took a queue from Baikals and iBelink's pricing models on past miners and decided to debut at the high premium because people paid for them.
It would appear, even with all the talk here, people are buying them at these premium prices.