The price is high because people pay it... Simple supply and demand business model. It's the same reason these super special, Rare, LE, named, etc corals came to be. People pay more when they think it's super special. Don't get me wrong, the corals are nice looking but noone will ever convince me that hundreds of dollars (or even thousands) for a single eye or 1/4" frag of something with a label is worth it... Generally though with the hobby growing in my area I have noticed the price of saltware equipment, fish, and corals go slightly down rather than up.
The oranges I have seen are not very vibrant on the hammers. I do however have a nice bright orange polyp digi...