I'm going to mildly disagree, only to give perspective that horse pricing is all over the board, and depends more on the amount the buyer wants to spend than anything really fixed about the horse. Horses values depend on who they are being marketed ~to~ more than where they are coming from. Local economies I'm sure also have an impact.
Trail riders around here, barring exceptions, spend $1000 to at most $2000 for a pleasure trail horse. Cyn is papered half Arab and was $1200 at 7. I'd call her sound, child safe and well broke. She wasn't marketed as a show horse. She's correct enough to probably be show quality Western Pleasure youth at the local level or 4H... but not at Arab shows.
Bay is papered full Arab, could have been show quality English or Western in his youth, and was $1000 when we bought him as a 10 year old green horse (14 years ago) sold to the endurance rider for $2000 with some experience, She sold him for $4000 to Bailey after competing with him, who put many more miles on him and sold him to me for $1000 again at 19, still sound but with more miles behind him than in front of him.
My friend Tiff bought her sorrel QH, papered and child safe, for $2000. She was being marketed as a show horse. Her grey Arab, also a terrific trail horse, was $400 - diamond in the rough who just needed good groceries and regular foot care.
Class A show people expect to pay more. Even those showing only at the local level won't go look at a horse that is less than $4000.... Though there might be some cheaper ones that could become what they want, they think they need to spend at least that much. National show people of course start higher.
Barrel racers... well the sky's the limit. I don't know what's typical for a local caliber competitor, but I'd guess some of the backyard horses competing or getting started didn't have high price tags, except those that are pretty serious about it, or those beginners trying to buy their way into a winning horse.
Dressage is the same way... at the local level, you'll find people competing on backyard horses without high price tags, and you'll find well bred horses with five digit price tags. Some of those backyard horses do pretty well! They both put in, and get out of it, what they want.
Excellent post.
I had to pick one of my kids up from volleyball practice and as luck would have it, it was walking distance from an extremely large tack store. I got 6 hoof picks, the really cute ones with the horse head on one end, (I couldn't find any picks last night, although I have several. Dogs probably stole them), I also got some mane and tail brushes, 2 bottles of Tuff Stuff, some Corta-Flex for George and a cute canteen for my son. Oh, and a new lunge whip.