It costs whatever the Japanese deem it costs. This is not America. They do not have to sell things at American prices. Costs are higher in Japan. I have a friend who lives out there and movie tickets are about $20 for a matinee. Also, most people don't buy DVDs, they only rent them. DVDs are really for collectors out there.

And Japan wonders why it has such a big piracy problem when their market makes things like this so ludicrously expensive.

That's interesting. How much would this Kabuto Blu-Ray release cost if it were, say, an American product?

And how much does the surrounding economy really play into the cost of a DVD? I'm sure there's some sort of unanimous base price that's intrinsic to production of these discs. Or does Toei only pay for the most choice quality Blu-Ray production and Americans always pay for the mediocre slop Blu-Ray quality?

One of the things that factors into these prices in Japan is like Kain mentioned that so little people are actually buying DVDs/Blu-Rays. So they have to set the prices high for the collectors out there that do buy them so that they make enough money out of those releases.

For instance in germany our prices for japanese media is also pretty high. For six episodes of Psycho-Pass on Blu-Ray we pay around fourty to fifty euros. This comes also from the fact that there are not that many people over here that buy animes on home video anymore also the production of the dub is insanely expensive plus the high licensing costs.

How much do you guys pay in america for those kinds of stuff? :)

Well you could look at it this way.
Toei "TV" division and Toei "Video" division are really 2 separate entities.
Toei Video actually has to purchase the source from the TV division, and pay the rest of the cost to throw in all the post-productions like staff/cast interviews, fixing the visuals, and materials for the discs.
Sentai OVs, Uchu Keiji OVs, etc. are Toei Video projects, which is why they cost more than a single episode on disc.
They work pretty much like Bandai Group subsidiaries.

I paid about $60 for all of Psycho Pass on BD.

Doesn't justify the DVD/Blu-ray cost though. I'm not sure what Japanese people get paid over there, but if the get paid relatively the same as America/Europe, this is ridiculously price gouging.

Yeah thats alot less than we pay for that over here. The full series over here is roundabout 200 dollars.

One of the reason I hate the euro still curious on what that would be in Dutch mark

Yeah that has nothing to do with the euro really. Its just that the licensing and production costs for anime in germany is ridiculously expensive.