Thank you to everyone for your comments, I understand now that other factors such as symbolic, religous etc are also considered when purchasing.
I would like to make clear that I did not mean to offend the buyer,
I recognised and value his experience and expertise, and knew immediately that it must be worth the price or even more.
Its just that I am new to collecting and was trying to understand whether I should try to include such pieces in my collection, I have always liked bespoke pieces like this and indeed purchased a strange one last year although it is no where near the quality of this piece (pics added), I was going to post it on the forum but it was already being discussed everyone was highly critical of it due to its practicality (balance etc) so I saved myself the embarassement
and buried my head in the sand
Regards
Bally