In a sense they are, because with those core counts, you're comparing to Epyc and Xeon, which are similarly very expensive.
What they're really missing is a midrange product for a midrange price. I can't blame them for avoiding the low end, but can't I get anything for less than $2000?
While you're right, that's certainly not by choice but rather stems from the fact that right now, workstation-class OpenPOWER boards are a rather small market.
You have to design the board for this server-class chip and break even on the costs for that + manufacturing a board that can actually hold these kind of chips.
So while it's unfortunate, it's not a case of ignoring the low end deliberately but mostly flows from the economic realities of not having anywhere near the addressable market of x86 or ARM.
The small community of ppc64(le) enthusiasts is very much hoping for a future where this changes, however small that chance might be...
Catch 22: Either the hardware could still be used in some system, so used stuff is expensive because some companies pay through the nose for spares, or the hardware is way too old for that, in which case it's an expensive collector's item. If it's very old and common it goes in the crusher.
This seems to be universally true for all kinds of UNIX workstations and servers.
