Comparison to prices in the 70's need to be made properly for them to have anympletely invalid. Maybe the hood pins are 7.5 times more than back then, but average salaries were also not even close to what they are now. Its called inflation. $8 in 1970 is about equivalent to $45 now. Yes, the aftermarket parts may have risen a little more than inflation, but thats life. Some things have not risen as much as inflation. Gasoline, up until this past year, was one of them. Even with the recent spike in gas prices, we were paying less for gas that we were in the 80's, relatively speaking. At the beginning of this decade, we were paying less than ever before in history for gasoline.
But back to the point of the topic, $400+ for an axleback exhaust system is a bit unreasonable, especially when for the SN95's, a full catback exhaust system would be the same or less for systems from the same company. Other than that though, if it hadn't been brought up, I wouldn't have thought aftermarket prices were all that unreasonable.