The sadder part is how good we had it pre-geoblocking. Full trans/brake gruppos fo $500 odd, xt brakes for $200 a set, $30 cassettes, clearance frames for few hundreds.
Tell me about it. I built the commuter after geoblocking hit. The pretty standard groupset I wanted to get for the commuter (Shimano GRX) was absolutely nowhere to be found, both bricks & mortar and online. I eventually had to go fleabay straight from Taiwan just to get the bike built.
It's hard to separate geoblocking from all the other price increases going on though, which I've noticed are just going up in general over the last 3 years:
XT Groupset: Up nearly 50% ($430 to $590)
Rims: Up 70% for the same thing ($139 to $230 each)
Frame: Nearly 80% more expensive ($2099 to $3755)
Tires: Up 30% ($75 to $99)
Hell, the XT cassette I bought in 2017 cost me $52, and it was $65 in late 2018 when I got another. The last one I bought cost me nearly $200.
Those are all if you can even find them in stock, which for Shimano is increasingly difficult. You can blame COVID for some of it, but Shimano stock has been difficult to find since before then as well.
Yeah, there's some technology movement there - That's a V2 vs a V3 Banshee and 1x11 vs 1x12 Shimano XT groupsets, but they are both current (or very nearly so) at the time.
Standard things though - like custom cut spokes and standard bearings for the frame have seen some uplift but nothing beyond the ordinary inflation.
The long & short of it is that if I were building a bike now, building the comparable Spitfire to what I made in 2018 becomes a very expensive and lot less affordable exercise.
/Rant