IN addition the whole price going up, you make it sound like NV is the source of it because of their $600 8800gtx.

Lets look at the MSRP of the top end cards for a moment at time of release.

9700 Pro $399
9800 XT $499
Radeon X850 XT Platinum Edition $549 or 499 for none platinum edition.
Radeon 1800xt $549
Radeon 1900xtx $649

Check these up if you want, these were the launching MSRP of these cards.

ATI only got cheaper with the 2900 xt because it didn't offer as good performance as the competition(and wouldn't have sold if it wasn't price well below competition to reflect it's decrease in performance) and the chip itself didn't make them much money as they got the hell off of making the 2900xt ASAP to 3870 because they were so much cheaper to make.

And the guy above is right, you are cherry picking deals(who find a launch card 70 dollars cheaper than MSRP), and the rest of your card are Midrange or deals.