Oh, agreed. Using ballpark that 300 mages (1% of 1%) have the spell you need to replace a mundane whatever, that's still a small number compared to the number of department stores that sell decent, off the rack suits. They may be able to cast a Fashion spell a round, in theory, but drain cuts down just how many they can really do in a day. Add to that the fact that if they want to produce high quality goods (say 4+ hits) they may have to do several before they get a single one, whereas the fashion house's nanoforge knocks out exactly the same item every single time at identical quality.
So in this example, you wind up with two types. Low end mages who knock out cheap suits and try to do it cheaper than Clothing Hut and high end ones who produce, on average, things as good as the higher-end fashion houses. Call that 230 low end and 50 mid range against (respectively) every cheap clothing place and every mom and pop tailor store. Their prices are going to be basically the same as their retail equivalent. The mage will be trying to make up for that by kicking out a high volume and having a lot less overhead in sweatshops and transportation. Then there might be one or two guys who are initiated to the point where they can eventually get enough hits to make something of a quality that could not be replicated by hand or technology (ie 7+). They're going to be charging based on high end fashion prices and on how much they could be making doing something else. With frequent rest breaks to recover stun it might take several days to get your suit just right by continually recasting on the same item. During that time you'd be paying the same as you'd pay a powerful mage to do anything else non-dangerous, like scrying, to a minimum of 5,000 nuyen (the rough cost of a very high fashion suit). Of course there's no hourly rate for mages published anywhere, so its hard to say how much that would be.
For something like memory editing or other non-dangerous but illegal magic, the price would skyrocket. Now you're talking about something that perhaps 4 or 5 people out of three million are willing to do at all and they are going to charge for it, a lot. You don't like their prices, you can find someone else. But is "a lot" equivalent to some new 'ware, a new car or is it in the corps and syndicates only range?
I continue to use the 1% of 1% because even people who work for a corp or do magical research may go around cleaning up lakes for charity or making suits for their friends on the weekend. In that case it may not come down to cash but its nice to have an idea of what sort of value society assigns to favors like that. Cash just happens to make a very convenient unit of exchange for tracking things like that. When your mage buddy with Evo cuts you a new suit, do you buy him a beer or a car to thank him?
As for increasing qualities, remember that a starting Adept is generally sinking 45-70 points into being an Adept, not 5. A mage spends the 5 more than that before counting spells.
