I remember NOT being able to afford a ground mount for so long in vanilla.
I remember seeing the mount vendor outside of the elf place and seeing 20g and being like WTF, I'm level 10 and only have like 5 silver.

No it was a lot more than 20. I was making good money at the very beginning selling copper bars for 1g each. But even by 40 I didn't have enough, I wanna say it was like 500g. A guild mate gifted me the gold and my dad tried to tell me I needed to grind that 500 to pay him back.

My brain deceives me clearly lol. But yeah, crazy price, I remember that much

level 40 mounts were 80g a pop and the riding skill 20g (always a bit less, due to reputation discounts)

Copper bars were never 1g each at any point in vanilla

They were more than 80 and yes they were 1g each. You must have never played the game when BC was current.

BC? As in TBC? TBC is not vanilla. TBC was the first expansion pack that came after vanilla. I dont doubt that material costs skyrocketed as did the whole economy when that happened.

Normal level 40 mounts were 80g base price, yes.
60 mounts 1000g base price, no additional riding skill needed

Having done some digging to doublecheck my numbers, id love to see where you get yours from.

I got mine from memory. Lol. Not sure why you're pushing so hard on something that doesn't even matter. You just came in on a thread that was resolved about something irrelevant 2 months after it was last mentioned.