That’s why it’s called the “bleeding edge”.
It’s very expensive to be “the first on your block”. A simple pocket calculator at Radio Shack back in the 1970ish time frame cost over $100. And that is in 1970 dollars.
In 1974 when I was in the Marines, I had to pay my roommate for his calculator that I accidentally busted with a floor buffer. It cost me $35 to replace. But I got to keep the damage done and repaired it so it would work.
According to the CPI Calculator, that equals $208 in today’s money......
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=35&year1=197408&year2=202210
I attended UCSD on a shoestring budget. Just enough to cover books/registration/parking and a daily 50 mile round trip drive to the campus. The calculator I used for all of my lower division classes was a 4 function plus a sign key purchased at Radio Shack for $110. I moved up to a Casio scientific calculator as I started my junior series classes. It was tough to compete against my fellow students with HP-35, HP-45 calculators that had a 1 button square root. I had to do it using my slide rule for first approximation, then a successive approximation with paper/pencil and 4 function calculator.
My graduation gift was an HP-25 programmable calculator. My first real "program" was an algorithm to generate a genetic crossover frequency table from the Schaum's Genetics study guide. No more interpolation.
Sometime in the 70’s, my dad paid $400 for a desk electronic calculator that would add, subtract, multiply and divide.
He owned a commercial glass company and did a lot of takeoffs and job estimations. I assume it was worth every penny.