Well, you bought your stuff when the economy started getting sour, hence why it's cheaper. 😛
I bought ALL my stuff from Newegg BTW, which at the time, they had stuff much cheaper than everywhere else. And still to this day, they continue to have some of the best prices for computer components.
Yes, a Geforce 8800 GTX was $650 when it first came out, and I was one of the few who jumped the gun and bought it. And man was it smoking fast when it first came out! I was able to run EVERY game at max settings. This was before the Core 2 came out, etc. I had an Opteron 285 OCed to 3Ghz, etc, before upgrading to a Core 2 Quad. Ever since the economy went sour, everything's been MUCH cheaper. Pretty much half price for everything.
I think in total, just for the Core 2 Quad upgrade, I spent about $1500 (includes new case, memory, motherboard, processor, old 8800 GTX, etc). I haven't had any incentive to upgrade to a newer graphics card yet, as my 8800 GTX has lasted for almost 3 years now. 😉