That's strange, I remember myself buying an Italian dev magazine back at the end of the 90s that included a full copy of Delphi (ok, 16bit version) with application redist rights. I think I probably paid it the equivalent of 10euro..

One thing that I liked a lot about Delphi (compared to VB for example) that there were plenty of free (sometimes with sources too) VCL components that could be downloaded and used for your own project.