You may be remembering proprietary (e.g. Sun) versus commodity (the prices for which were even lower, according to the table in the sibling comment).
This sort of markup still exists in "enterprise" hardware today, which is why moving to the cloud actually is a cost savings for some places. Of course, operating their own operating their own commodity hardware instead would save even more, but this is typically a political impossibility.
Thinking back it was probably due to currency swings for NZD <-> USD. There was a period of few years back then when the exchange rate could be anywhere between $0.40 USD and $0.75 USD. So $1000 USD could mean very different amounts in NZD depending on exactly when my hazy memories were thinking about.
There were also various Taiwanese earthquakes and resin factory fires etc that probably caused me to remember the price spikes better than the average prices. Well that's my excuse :)
This sort of markup still exists in "enterprise" hardware today, which is why moving to the cloud actually is a cost savings for some places. Of course, operating their own operating their own commodity hardware instead would save even more, but this is typically a political impossibility.