The Nachts had a really cool budgeting class one day back in June 2011 that had some interesting bits of data. It only included costs of land and food though, and we didn't have the online cattery or low-prim cats back then so it didn't include that information of course. Someone should update that info, it would be interesting to see how much things have changed. My own, without the cost of purchasing a cat I might buy to bring in something new to the cattery, is around $L350 to $L400 depending on what sim I have the cat on, plus I use milk, don't use low-prim mode, don't use cattery for live cats, etc. so mine might be higher than others.
$L 700 seems high to me, and is that per week, per month? Over a cat's lifetime?
Anyway...
This kind of discussion has been ongoing practically since KittyCatS began and there are some really old forum posts about this exact same issue (the oldest post I could find on a quick search was from June 2011). There have been a few attempts to help regulate the market e.g. a group of breeders and market owners got together a long time ago to see if there was anything we could do about people over pricing or under pricing; that group died out after about 6 months I think. There were also groups of people that would notify you if you over-priced or under-priced your cat.
New traits have always been over-priced; in fact, $L100 is not the highest price ever paid for a cat with a new trait, and not even recently. It was (and still is, I think?) quite common at auctions for new traits to go for 40k, 50k, and 100k or more sometimes if the trait appeared to be quite recessive and it was desired by more than one person. I had a new fur back in 2012 that wasn't even all that recessive but I had people in my IM offering insane amounts of money for it because it was new -- and I hadn't even put it up for sale, yet. If there are people who will pay, then those higher-priced cats will sell. When there aren't enough people to pay the high prices, those prices must drop to be more affordable to a few more people. When those cats no longer sell, the prices drop even farther to be more affordable to those who couldn't/wouldn't pay the higher prices. By that time, the trait has proliferated throughout the markets and catteries and is not as "rare" as it was in the beginning.
I'm not a business person at all, but I've been around KittyCatS since near the beginning, and have read most of (and occasionally replied in) the past posts that address market issues. I think it's a legitimate concern and there will always be greedy people whose sole purpose is to make money, and there will always be those on the opposite end of the spectrum who breed KittyCatS for fun and don't care if they break even. There are lots of people in between: people who do it because they love it but would love to make just enough to feed the cattery or to break even.
But the greedy people who try to capitalize on the newest traits and the desperate people that under-price a batch of cats in order to make some quick money for the hair fair or skin fair or whatever the current shopping event of the week is - they will always be around.
I guess my conclusion is that there's not much you can do beyond discussion. People are likely going to reply with mathematical calculations that show how much it costs to breed a cat, sell a cat, run a shop, make a sandwich, etc. And people are going to reply and say that everyone has the right to sell their cat at whatever price they want, and they're right. People will choose to buy or not. A long time ago a lot of breeders used to say something like, "Choose a price you'll be happy with when the kitty sells and it's no longer your kitty." the idea being that you worked hard making this kitty and would love to keep it but you need to sell it to feed the other cats, so pick a price that wouldn't make you sad when you had to give up the kitty, it wasn't meant as "pick a price that will allow you to buy a zillion new starters so you can find more of the best new traits and sell those for really high prices, too".
I will shut up now, but a story, to conclude...
My friends and I visit the wine regions around here occasionally; it's no secret that I do love my wine, cheese, and chocolate
I went to this one winery where they had this amazing ice wine. Ice wine in Canada is a big deal and the good stuff is very expensive. You can pay $100 or more for a good bottle of ice wine (and the bottles are really small, they're only 375mL - you can fit the contents of an entire bottle in a Solo Cup, I know that from experience LOL). You can get ice wine that's less expensive and pretty good, but not as good as a lot of the more expensive stuff. So this little winery run by two young brothers, they had this amazing ice wine and when I tasted it, I was dismayed and thought, "This is gonna be one of those hundred dollar bottle ones that I'll just taste and dream about but never buy..." But when I checked, it was only $26 (a pretty good price for ice wine). When I asked about it, one of the brothers said that they felt that you shouldn't have to have a lot of money to enjoy their wines. They loved making their wines and wanted to share them with everyone, not just the elite; they wanted the "average" person to be able to enjoy them. They didn't need to charge $100 per bottle, they got by just fine charging $26, and were rewarded with all the great comments they would receive from people who loved their wines that might not otherwise have a chance to buy them. These guys might not ever be rich monetarily, but they are well-loved in the winery community, have had a few articles in magazines about them, and they have this passion for making amazing wine that is so huge, they feel they MUST share this with everyone. When we first started making them a regular stop on our winery trips, there'd be a few other people there. Now the place is really busy whenever we go there - full of happy wined-up people that turn to the stranger next to them and say, "OMG have you tried their ice wine, yet?!"