Janis,
I am really glad to see this topic come up and would love to know how others set prices for items they sell. By way of transparency my current pricing strategy is described below.
For what it is worth, the $50 price point works for me too.
The handling times listed below are general values for me. The details show 5 scrubs per piece before seasoning. Not every piece has to be scrubbed 5 times - some are scrubbed more some are scrubbed less. And of course the time per scrub varies by the piece also.
handling time per skillet
5 mins mid-LB (1 scrub mid-LB to see where the piece stands)
5 mins post-LB (1 scrub post-LB to send the iron to the electro in a clean condition)
10 mins mid-electro (1 scrub averaging 5-10 mins )
10 mins post-electro (final scrub-and-dry - truthfully it is likely to be 15+ mins for the final scrub-and-dry)
10 mins pre-bake (warm skillet, apply oil, remove oil, remove oil, remove oil)
5 mins mid-bake (pull from oven, wipe dry again)
10 mins post 1st seasoning (apply oil, remove oil, remove oil, remove oil)
5 mins mid-bake#2 (pull from oven, wipe dry again)
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60 mins per/skillet cleaning time
administrative overhead if selling online
10 mins photograph (At a minimum I try to photograph before cleaning and after seasoning)
10 mins to catalog
10 mins to list for sale
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30 mins per item administrative overhead (not counting time to package)
I aim for $15/hour. That is an arbitrary number; you might aim for a higher or lower rate. Less seems like not enough, more seems... not exactly too much but not right either, especially for average iron. Some pieces take less handling, but *at least as often* they take more handling. My price then becomes the cost of the skillet + handling + any mark-up that is appropriate because the market will pay it. A 3-notch Lodge is pretty much a run of the mill item while a Griswold EPU will command more.
For pricing purposes I try to stick with 90-mins total handling time even if the actual time varied. This is tricky because 1.5 hours at $15/hour is already $22.50 before adding in the cost of the piece. Sometimes I cannot justify $22.50 for a piece and choose to sell it for less. Other times I might be able to justify quite a bit more. It doesn't take many $40 or $50 pieces to raise the average price of a bunch of sub-$22 pieces.
For your skillets, by my reckoning which might not apply to your methods, you have 3 hours of handling time (since you do not necessarily have to photograph, catalog, and list the skillets). Three hours at $15/hr that is $45. You did fine if you bought the three skillets for less than $5 but even if you paid more for them, you aren't taking a bath. Plus there is something to be said for offering volume discounts to your customers :-)
