So, it occurred to me in the fresh light of morning, I could of course actually LOOK what prices my resin print-house actually charges for pre-coloured models.
The cheapest I saw were around $13-14, for "25mm" (this for a lady standing on a pile of bones being quoted as 46mm tall; even accounting for the base and the skull pile, that's 28 or more like 30-35mm...), but that would at least be vaguely be in the volume of a BattleMech. (My KS Diashi is just under 50mm tall.)
That's WAY less that I have seen before, at actually would put it less than IWM's metal BT models. (Which mostly, I think, illustrates how bonkers expensive metal is getting and why CGL is absolutely right to be pushing the plastic and, I understand, using the same sculptors.) But that makes it a... Plausible price for the interested. I can't even say "but I wouldn't pay that for a model" because I wouldn't for an RPG figure, but I have bought IWM BattleMechs for that because I was interested enough and I'm a cheapskate...!
Interesting.
That said, I recall them saying that there was a minimum thickness of about 2mm, which I consider to be way too chunky (I work to half that and I wasn't sure even if the model they were going to do would actually work for them).
So I would posit, then, that CGL's coloured must be at least of a plausible cost for them to produce, especially at what would be very high volume.
(Still something I can't personally really look at for my own (business) models, since the other previous barrier was simply I am not (and I especially can't afford) a digital artist.)