Yes but if the T-shirt award level had tens of thousands of backers, they can hire a large company like threadless to print and distribute the T-shirts (Even complicated Threadless t-shirts are mostly $20 with a nice profit margin, with free shipping on orders over $50). At these scales $25 is quite profitable.
You misread my statement. The claim the parent made was that $15 was near cost, and I was stating my experience that the soup-to-nuts cost is closer to $10 (and could be lower)
