The cost of re-issues

Jazz & Blues Music Reviews brings up a good point about the sales price of re-issues. Even though the examples aren't the best, Hill's Passing Ships and Getz's Bossa’s and Ballads: The Lost Sessions are being issued for the first time (as the Getz title indicates and the Hill obliquely points to, which is fitting), Tim's point stands.

I've often wondered how it was possible that, say, a Sam Rivers Complete Blue Note compilation (not exactly a re-issue) or Fuschia Swing Song (a re-issue) could cost the same as a new album. I have little idea of the cost of re-issuing something, but it has to be significantly less than issuing new music. I always feel like music that has paid for itself many times over should be dirt cheap, but maybe that would put current recording artists at even more of a disadvantage?

That said, at the local FNAC there are lots of Blue Notes to be had for 11.90 euros: the usual suspects, but also some surprises (Bobby Hutcherson's Dialogue for the former and Greg Osby's Symbols of Light, which came out in 2001, for the latter).