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I've downloaded anime models for free. I'm sure they were <$160 without the k. https://github.com/Noah670/stablediffusionAnime

Those models are not from scratch.

It is a fair point though - there's no utility in training an openly available model from scratch. Finetuning is far more practical.

Numerous reasons why someone might want to train model from scratch; for example, copyright province and licensing control.