I'm not defending it, but that's a Murphy Lab model. Why is it $6,999? Because a Les Paul Standard from the same line is $9,699.
Yup. If the price for that Junior makes you blush, take a lap through TGP for some perspective on just how many guitars of that price range are regularly moving off of store shelves. Those guitar shops with dozens of $5k+ LPs/Strats aren't doing it for fun...
But as mentioned above, a Murphy Lab is its own niche among high-dollar Gibsons. Lots of people will spends thousands in LPs and never bother with these and other people will say they're the only real Les Paul worth buying and so Gibson charges what they do.
And tangentially, this segment from a video about Norman's Rare Guitars was really funny to me because a salesman talks about how through the 50's Gibson was aggressively changing major components of the LP shape and construction. Gives some perspective on how arbitrary it is that so many guitarists turn up their noses on anything changes to LPs in the last 60+ years and the most sought after custom LPs these days are almost always flash-frozen of the 1959 spec.
There's another factor not mentioned here. The last couple of years have given rise to scalpers.  There's a subset of humanity whose alternate source of income is now flipping goods. How many of these guitars do you think are going to players vs people looking for profit?
Gibson prices have always been absurd. I'd never NEVER buy one brand new.  Most used guitars are almost going for MSRP for all brands. The only deals I find are with kiesel and carvin.
My LP Custom was bought brand new in 1976 for $600 (3000 today). I'm sure there's some rising costs due to tech changes, material increases, etc, but that's a huge delta between $3000 and what LP customs cost today.

You think that’s bad, imagine buying a Custom Shop R8, R9, or R0 then sending to Historic Makeovers and paying another $4,600 to have them add a Brazilian rosewood fingerboard, recarve the top to a “vintage correct” spec, refinish it, etc. They do good work, but still.
Guitars are a cheap hobby, you can get into it for under $500 and most don't take it much further than that.
Have you seen cars? Guns? Fine wine? Houses?

When Schecter becomes the most iconic rock and roll guitar brand in the world, and not the most iconic guitar brand for teenage goth kids, maybe it's possible.
The euro and the dollar are 1:1 right now. A raw Aristides is 2800 dollars.
Who cares about Gibson and fender on this website. Like seriously. Everyone go buy Aristides.
Laugh all you want, but one day you'll tune to Classic Crabcore FM, and we'll see who gets the last laugh.
My money is on the 23 fret Jacksons...
who knows, they've done a lot of work over the past decade to - if not distance themselves from it - at least add more to their lineup that isn't a redburst C6 Hellraiser with 120 pounds of abalone attached to it. we're viewing this through the lens of knowing what schecter was in its early days, and not being born 20 years from now when they are what they are then. i was born in the early 90s and have no attachment to Ibanez from the 80s, i have an attachment to them now because of what they're doing right now, and what they were doing when i was getting into guitar.
 Nobody gonna die if they can't afford hipster guitars.
No guitarist who is discerning enough to warrant an instrument at such a price is going to buy that one to play it. It's a wall hanger investment for tasteless wankers, it won't raise in value beyond rates of actually collectible Gibsons before the buyer is in the ground- if ever. The only thing that makes sense to me is Gibson is trying to artificially inflate their product values to avoid the danger of yet another bankruptcy. I guess they think it beats working and competing with companies who actually innovate and chase margins. It doesn't.
A lot of professionals and studios buy these to replace/stand-in for actual vintage instruments.
The vintage market has driven the prices of real deal old stuff, even later 70's and 80's stuff in some cases, to the point that it's a huge liability to tour or record with.
Sure, some of these will sit in glass cases in 2000sq/ft rec rooms in mansions, but not all of them. Some will be used as above, and others will get some play by some rich dude, which is the same as a lot of very expensive ESPs or Jacksons or Ibanez or whatever.
It's just weird how upset folks get about it, when in the contemporary "metal" guitar community we have the same thing. Where do you think all those $8k+ ESPs go? Or $6k rainbow marble vomit Aristides? They go on the wall in some rich dude's condo where he plays them a few minutes a week in between all the other cool rich dude things they do. This is a hobby. That's it.
I've gotten a thorough email describing the issues with production of guitars / basses from a major company and it was surprising how bad things are .
To keep things short , everyone is backlogged , and everyone is raising prices to accommodate the increases in shipping and manufacturing . Hardware has gotten more expensive , pickups have gotten more expensive , so that obviously adds to the cost of the guitar , which the builder has to accommodate . Its understandable and out of everyone's control , but on the flip side of things , people are willing to pay absurd prices for their dream gear , and that's been like that since guitars were invented . No one has a gun to your head forcing you to buy expensive things . In my opinion , if you really have a love for a certain model and it's a high quality guitar hand built in the USA with premium parts , go for it .  On the other side of that now , you'd be surprised how nice lower to middle end instruments are now.
It really comes down to what the consumer wants badly enough .
The prices of everything are getting out of control.
It's not just guitars....
Yup, guitars being the last problem in the list, considering that here in Italy we are going full throttle with charity acts towards Ukraine but we actually won't have enough gas to get warm this winter.
Most of the people I see buying Aristides are basically poor. Or poor after purchasing it anyway. They've got the youth demographic.
