> A jeweler might have high material costs (gold and diamonds), an artist moderate material costs (paint and canvas), and a greeting card company low material costs (paper), but they all have "material costs".

There is a great line in the book Narconomics [0] that compares the "value added" of creating high end paintings to narcotics. He points out that the input (paint, coca leaves) are VERY cheap. The end product (high end paintings, cocaine) is very expensive.

(I believe he makes this point to show that raising the price of inputs slightly has no real bearing on the price at the end given the size of the margins)

0 - https://amzn.to/4r8fIJP