Moreover the 707, which is basically what these trash cans were made for, entered service in _1957_.
Sometimes a spade is just a spade, greed is just greed and you don't need to bend over backwards to find an excuse for bigcorp.
So when they’re approached to make some more, what are they going to do? The easy answer is turn down the request, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. Then they’d have said something like “the person who made these retired three years ago, the machinery is now scrap metal, the software for that machinery is on a floppy disk in a recycling centre somewhere, I don’t even know how who sold us the materials, and whatever we can do to replicate it would be considered a new product that has to go through testing again. So if you want this it’d take a lot of resources, and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.”
To which the response would have been: “get it done.”
I’m sure there was some added on to sweeten the deal, mind, but that isn’t the outrageous thing, nor would it be as dramatic as it sounds. The outrageous thing is that Boeing would have specifically outlined the end of production of components years in advance, and that would have been opportunity to buy and stockpile while the price was reasonable. Of course, some middle manager would have said “lol no it’s just a bin, we will just get one from Walmart”, and the complications would have only been realised when it was too late.
Getting small quatities for obsolete aircraft parts, even in the civilian world, costs fortunes.
And yes, if it was (speculation) a new production run, all the manufacturing most likely needed re-certification: new production site, new production tech and so on. Maybe even certification to whatever standard was used for the original 707 / E-3, which might even be impossible (surface treatment that is now illegal due to EHS reasons, material norms being obsolete requiring new certification of the part using e.g. plastics with another norm...).
Plus the obligatory surcharge for the endless pockets of the litteral Pentagon.