The cost of COB, will it drop significantly?

I'm noticing a serious price disparity between new full spectrum cobs and some of the previous generations.

In your opinion, is demand driving up the price or is it the cost of technical innovation being paid out? Or is it simply material cost?

If it's material cost I don't see it dropping much. But if they're paying back their testing and research then it should drop eventually and if it's demand, I would assume their supply could eventually catch up.

Trying to make sure I'm not buying something this year that will be worth half as much next year.

Does anyone have an examples of price history/trends on cobs?

Well buying something this year that works awesome doesn't matter if it depreciates in value if it still works awesome for another 10 years.. Why would you chase 2% efficiency? Unless there is a huge leap in tech, its not worth it.

But then it depends on what you mean when you say "full spectrum cob lights" Amazon is full of things called that that are really a waste of money.

From my limited experience, it depends on the company, cree have kept there cobs fairly high priced while other companies have got cheaper as new generations have been released. End of the day though the light does the same thing for you next year as it does this year. A COB fixture is for years not just for Christmas.

It's not 2%, we're talking 15-20% difference in par/lumen per watt. That works out to a significant difference in overall setup cost and energy consumption for the same amount of area covered.

The difference being, if the price drops by 25% I can afford to buy shitty Chinese knock offs for a few dollars a piece, they'll survive a year most likely. Then I can buy even more of the good ones next year. Also I currently have some lights, so if I hold off for a bit I could possibly get a lot more cobs for the same amount.

There was a significant leap in efficiency over the last couple years and it has started to slow down. The prices are still a bit all over the place though. LEDs aren't a fully mature technology yet, but it appears as if it's slowing down and the prices are starting to regulate a bit with the slowing of significant advances.

I would say it already has. When cree cxa3590 and cxb3590 first came out 50$+ per, that was about 4 years ago.