To me, it's got a whole lot more to do with scarcity than expense. This one is glaringly absent from my accumulation. I would love to own such a specimen , to join the others that I will never shoot.
Sometimes foreign LE/Mil sidearms were chosen based on what vast quantities of surplus ammo they were able to obtain or already had on hand. That is how/why the .380 Rimmed (.38 S&W) Service Six revolvers came to be.