The reason these filters are so much more money is because they are made in much lower numbers than most of the old-style can filters.

There's a reason a PF47 filter for a Chevy V6 engine is $2 is because there are about 787,987,174,165,740.2 Chevrolet V6 engines on the road, and every one of them needs a clean filter every 2-5k miles.