I have albums that I cannot find digitally or are prohibitively expensive to replace with CDs. I have 3 highly capable Yamaha decks with onboard dbx2 capabilitis that achieves a S/N ratio of greater than 95db; ie no tape hiss. Even with normal bias bias tape, the frequency response is 20 to 20Khz. My friend was of the same opinion that tapes could never reach the quality of the source. So for shits-n-giggles, I recorded a CD on to a Chrome tape. My friend's jaw dropped when he heard the taped version and didn't realize it was the tape and not the CD I was playing. Upper tier decks like the ones I own easily reach the source in recording quality.
As far as tape prices go, Chromes and Metal tapes are no longer being produced so there are people there that are asking the moon in prices for these tapes, especially the metals. Its as slimey as store owners that jack the prices up for food and water after a disaster. Going rate for Chrome tapes are about $10