I can say from my own experience that todays realistic art is not more expensive than a few years ago. It is the other way around. Tools like Modo and ZBrush allow to create in hours what we had to built in days or even weeks with old-school polygon modellers like Max, Lightwave and Co.
I'm not primarily an artist, but I do have some experience with sculpting, UV mapping, baking normal maps, texture creation and so on. I remember first hearing of normal-mapping technology (many years back) and being dismayed at the inevitable increase in difficulty of asset creation.
To my surprise and relief, such a natural and real way to add per-pixel details (as well as continual advances in software such as Blender) actually made it easier and easier as the years went by.
So yeah, I'm not an experienced artist like you, Frank, but it's nice to see my impressions of the art side of things reflected in your experience.
Jibb
