Could be because Mr. Miki himself flies over from Japan to personally hand select the woods used in those cues. I saw him at the expo this past spring & he showed me some holly & other stuff that he dug through piles of wood to find. He wasn't buying bulk to get wholesale prices. He was hand picking and paying premium for premium wood. The man doesn't cut costs or corners in any of the Mezz line, and Exceed is the cream of Mezz. It costs serious money to build them, so of course they aren't going to be cheap. "Cheap" was never a factor in those cues, only quality.
Imagine a cue maker spending his life perfecting & advancing the craft, then passing it on to the next generations to continue, and so on. Collect that cumulative knowledge and record it all in a single cue. That's an Exceed cue. It is the current pinnacle of quality from a family of cue makers who have always been revered for quality. That's worth something.
