It helps to not forget that the gaming and DIY market is relatively small, large volumes are mostly moved through OEMs, an area where AMD never really got their foot in the door. It's the reason why Intel still has a massive x86 market share (70 to 80%), in spite of the 13th/14th gen problems and notebook CPUs prior to Lunar Lake being noticably less efficient, and AMD outselling Intel at larger DIY retailers (top sellers in CPUs since forever on Amazon, Mindfactory in Germany or Microcenter, etc., perhaps with the exception of the time when Alder Lake was faster than Ryzen 3 and comparatively good value) since basically Ryzen 1's much better price/performance ratio.
That said, I just checked what I paid for the GeForce 256 back in 1999, and that is, adjusted for inflation, 550€. Graphics card prices weren't always peaches and sunshine back in the day either.