Allegedly, more care is going into these rather limited-edition modern pressings (better quality vinyl, better mastering, etc.), so they should sound better than the discs of yore. So perhaps that explains the cost difference beyond inflation. Certainly $25 is a jump from the $3 to $4 price I paid back in the 60s.
That said, you couldn't pay me to listen to vinyl (and I owned hundreds of albums on vinyl back in the day which I played on a high-end turntable with a straight-line tracking tonearm and a moving coil cartridge). I've become accustomed to a flat frequency response, higher dynamic range, noise-free media and vastly superior channel separation of digital media. While early CDs suffered from using the same masters as vinyl (which included the RIAA curve to try to overcome some of vinyl's limitations), modern CDs sound much better. And higher resolution sources, whether they are DVD-Audios, Super Audio CDs (SACDs) or 24-bit FLAC files with sampling rates from 48 kHz to 192 kHz (with 96 kHz, probably being the most popular) sound far better yet. Plus you don't have to flip the album over half-way through!
I know the hipsters love their vinyl (and some profess loving cassettes!), but I hear and enjoy so much more out of modern digital. What really kills me are those who prefer to take an album recorded and mastered digitally, cut into vinyl (with the inherent distortion that adds), then played back through a turntable and cartridge that add their own distortion and claim is sounds better. It's not better, it's just distorted in a way they find pleasing. Of course, that's just my opinion. That and five bucks will buy you an overpriced cup of coffee.
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