[Vineyard]

It was a $600 toilet seat, not $2000.

Congress had passed a law that required transfers of hardware from Active service to Reserve service to be “essentially new” condition (to prevent removing all good hardware to support Active, while screwing the Reservists.)

Well -the “conformal” fitting toilet seat on these P-3’s, if damaged, was replaced with the closest approximate fitting seat from a local hardware store. Workable - but not “pretty”.

When the Navy transferred a half-dozen or so P-3’s to the Reserve squadrons, there were several P-3s that DIDN’T have the proper conformal seat, and to be in compliance with the law, the Navy had to order several seats from the fabricator. Imagine the cost to ...1. review the contract from the Navy and ensure compliance with untold number of rules/regulations 2. Find and pull out the mold ....3. Fabricate a limited number of seats for the Navy ....4. Ship said seats to the Navy 5. Submit billing to the Navy and justify all chargeable expenses.

While I don’t like the $600 per seat cost - the company probably made less than 5% profit, and had to have all sorts of accountant time and lawyer review time to ensure that they didn’t do anything that might get some Inspector General to come after them for some sort of crime (including laws that they might not even be aware of!!).

[Myrddin]

I've had to do a few "short runs" like that. You don't get to amortize the setup costs over a large number of produced items, so the per item cost is fairly high.

[jonascord]

Some years back, a fellow designer at Northrup Grumman had occasion to specify a 1" x 8" lg Grade 8 bolt.
The purchasing agent sighed, and went to a local specialty fastener vendor, there in Grand Prairie.
The vendor could only get them in lots of 100. $250 per lot. (This price is for demo purposes. I don't remember the actual value.)
The vendor charged the $250 to Grumman, and kept the other 99 on his shelves, because Grumman didn't want inventory like that.
A year later came another requirement for that size bolt. The vendor tells the purchasing agent that he still has 99 bolts on the shelf that Grumman has already paid for, so he'll ship it over at no charge.

The purchasing agent goes batso with horror! "No, you have to charge me $250 based on last years price! Otherwise, the GAO audit will eat me alive! How would I explain that I charge $250 the first time and the next time, it's free?"

True story.