Sorry to say, but none of my top notch replica's are licensed props. I have some licensed replica's where I also have a fan-made version, and in most of the cases, the fan-made version is more accurate / better built than the official licensed prop. So purely stated the a licensed prop "derserves" the same price as a fan-made replica, just because it's offocialy licensed, is not justified in my opinion. All depends on built quality and accuracy, and in many cases this is the main concern of fan's when making replica's, while the main concern of companies is making profit.
Statements like this always makes me laugh!
So many factors go into pricing and construction of a licensed piece that many people fail to see the process and bottom line.
Do some fan built items have better build quality and more accuracy? Yes, quite often. Are those fan made items worth the high price tag? Yes, quite often. But you need to realize a fan building a prop at home, who doesn't need to answer to a studio (who owns the rights) or a factory (who might need to change things due to production limitations), can achieve much more accuracy in the end. Sure you would hope a licensed prop could meet the same quality, and in many cases it starts off with that intention, but after changes by the studio (many changes you just don't understand why they want it changed), and corners that must be cut because the factory cannot mass produce something correctly, the licensed piece starts to become less accurate. And you can argue accuracy with a studio, but they have final say and they can squash your item before you bring it to market. So you play by their rules or you get nothing. In the licensing game you PAY even if you produce nothing. If you pay $10K for the licensing rights and never release one item, you do not get a refund.
And then there is pricing aspect. You are looking at tens of thousands of dollars put into the license.... lawyer fees for contracts and other legal issues... thousands put into the design and creating of the pre-production piece.... thousands of dollars given to the artist to paint it.... monthly paychecks for the employees on your payroll... contracting a factory for creating factory samples.... then contracting the factory to do the full production run.... then paying for a truckload of the items to ship via boat overseas.... then pay a freight delivery company to deliver it from the docks.... then pay your monthly rent on the warehouse you store the product in which can run upwards of $10,000 a month when you have a whole catalogue of products... then you have utilities for the warehouse and office.... and much more.
I constantly here people say, well the company is paying $75.00 per piece from the factory but asking $500 and that is greedy. Is it? Add all the above costs into the equation, and then you find your profit margin is depleted.
That means that often, the end result becomes a guy who makes a run in his garage avoids all that overhead and can sell a better quality more accurate item for about the same price and people question why. Like I said, people will never truly understand any of that until they have to deal with it daily. You will never understand the frustration of wanting to create something completely accurate, and having the best intend on delivering that, and only to watch it slowly slip away from accuracy with each requested change. And to want to make things affordable, but the more the changes happen and the more factory production run costs go up, you cringe watching the retail price rise.