Alright, we may be a tad biased, but if I'm being as honest as I can be about this project, it's definitely worth spending the money on. Yes, it's expensive. Very expensive. But look what's been accomplished with only, what, 1500-2000 Pandoras out in the wild? It's insane the amount of progress that has been made. The plan is for at least 8000 to be in the wild (at least from what anyone can guess from the inital concept of having two batches, each 4,000 units). A larger-than-typical number of those people are developers, capable of making great things.
So sure, the price is high. After all, this is a new company who makes their money exclusively on the hardware alone. Other companies can undersell their stuff because legitimate devs usually need licenses to work with that hardware. But this platform relies soley on the community. So the possibilities are literally endless. There's no restriction on what can be developed, controlled by some narrow-minded, unidirectional company that calls all the shots. There's no 'hacking' or software-wise voiding your warranty (except for maybe messing with the kernel or bootloader, I'll give you that) because the software isn't even OP's.
It's a very good investment. But if you can't afford it I can totally understand that. It was a pretty deep cut for me to buy my Pandora. But if you'd like to contribute in some way to eventually lower the price of the Pandora or the next-generation of platforms made by OP, you can always donate to help offset their costs.