The cuts are expensive because *getting* the cuts can be expensive (not to mention that JC is an absolute gold sink until you get up to token designs; even cut greens don't sell for anything worth the deposit cost.) Most of the dailies take 3 raw uncommons to complete. (This is also why raw uncommons are usually more expensive than raw rares.) Usually, if you buy the raw gems on the day of the daily they're between 60 and 100 gold each unless you get them very early in the day (or Light knows how many prospects; buying the gems outright is usually cheaper than going through ore until you get RNG love, even with the inflation) so if all tokens come from 3-gem dailies a single design can cost between 540 and 900g, plus about 15 minuts of getting gems and such. If the same gem gets asked for 2 or 3 days in a row, it gets worse. For the cuts that aren't bought often, I'll charge a bit more on the AH to make up what I paid for the design. (Fortunately, I often have a monopoly on those cuts, so I can charge what I want. Inferno ruby cuts, which most JCs have by now, usually run a 5-15g profit on my server and sometimes will be cheaper than a raw inferno ruby, compared to 50g or more profit on a more obscure cut, like spell penetration or sta/dodge.)