I feel like we’ve been down this road before! It’s worth precisely what someone will pay for it, nobody is holding a gun to anybody’s head.
Oh, yes! But until they re-issue it, the trouble will continue... The fact that people still buy it doesn't mean it's not overpriced. The fact that a tire change on a Bugatti cost $50,000 and somebody pays that much doesn't mean that it's not overpriced and that you can buy a whole brand new car with that money. It's priced like that just because you have no other options at all... Which again boils down to the luxury item, collector's item, whatever you gonna call it.
To me, this situation about MK Strat is a bit personal since I remember early on when I was a kid, I was "smelling" online Fender catalogs and MK Strat felt like something that I'll never get, despite the fact it's a fairly priced strat, and $1500 dollars is not even custom shop territory, it's a regular strat, but for almost any kid apart from Mark Knopfler's daughter — you can forget about it.
But as the time went by, and I finally would be able to buy it, they stop producing it, and all of the sudden it became this jewelry item. But it hasn't stopped being a regular strat though. It's not even vintage, there's no reason for it to be overpriced, whatsoever. It's not vintage, it's not terribly rare, it's not terribly unique, the signature isn't real, they screwed up production color, it has stock pickups in it, stock wiring, it's a regular strat, period.
So anybody buying it for 3-4 times the original cost knows that he's buying a luxury item, and not a guitar anymore.