Just wondered why all the corvette specialty catalogs have got such premium prices on everything? the C4 vettes are the most affordable vette's you can buy. But god forbid you need something for them. went to one of the websites and made a wish list it came to 50,000 dollars. Lol. I understand the way things are today. But when you are on a budget. I will be dead before I get my baby the way she deserves to be. Just saying. not trying to bash anybody or offend. just seems I would be better off selling the old girl for parts and buying a mustang. and I hate mustang's.

You will find that prices for Corvette parts and accessories are high regardless of generation.  I have to buy parts for my C1s as well as my C4 and the prices always seem out of line.  Of course, go to any GM parts dealer and you will find the same situation with prices even higher than the aftermarket sellers. 
Compared to other vehicles, Corvettes are low volume sellers and therefore parts will generally be higher due to the per unit cost of production.
I guess you will have to prioritize what you need to purchase.  Also, check out swap meets at car shows, especially Corvette shows.  You can often find good quality used parts with much lower prices than the catalogs. 

Since GM/Chebby has not supported the C4 era cars for a long time, parts are hard to find. THe folks that do reproduction parts have to spend a ton of cash to get parts engineered, and produced, so they pass the savings on to their customers. If a particular part is not extremely popular, then no-one is going to reproduce it....so anyone that has OE/NOS parts can charge whatever they want for them. The aftermarket can supply a lot of stuff, but it may not be exactly the same as OE/original, so the price is a little better for stuff like that.
The bare troof is, whatever the market will bear is what the cost will be....

Try to find parts that are a one year ONLY item.....THAT'S the expensive stuff.....

I agree....CFI to TPI ('84 - '85) is a great example of how things can become very scarce.

 U got that right  things like door seals & a back hatch seal even the aftermarket stuff is way outta line and most of the time the stuff dosnt fit   just order a rubber gas door seal with a drain LOL   YEP it dont fit  off to the bone yard in dover ohio they have several wrecks   take this to the bank I picked up a felpro gasket kit top end TPI for 65.00 as Summit raceing I live about 20 min. away the same gasket kit at Ecklers is 139  thats  un real    gotta shop around summit has good priceing on stuff but that corvette only  will get us every time  

|UPDATED|6/24/2013 11:03:28 AM (AZT)|/UPDATED|

Attend Corvettes at Carlisle, August 22-26. Acres of parts vendors, not to mention the fantastic experience.