My first job after graduating was at GEC research working on microwave integrated circuits.
I remember the labs budgeting for a new VNA, an 8510, which only went to 26.5GHz but still cost something like $500,000 (this may have even been £500,000).
As a comparison my starting salary was £5,000 per year. The flat I bought was £23,000 (in Harrow). So half a million was equivalent to something like £2.5 million at least.
In the light of that a mere $50,000 for a system going to 50GHz does seem cheap!
Though maybe it is worrying that the support contract runs from April 1st