That's weird.. I don't recall feeling like it was a money thing that I had a Spectrum, only that my parents had made the 'wrong' call on a 50/50 decision (though I will forever be grateful for that early exposure to programming!)

Trying to search for local prices back then is tricky, but they look to have been in the same ballpark (£180-200).

Yes, that’s quite frankly a big part of what made kids unpopular when I was a kid. Don’t know what it’s like these days but I suspect it hasn’t changed that much