The ceramic is cheap. It runs about 25$ for a box. I am not sure how many plugs can be made from a box. Maybe 2,000. If you bought a 4x8 sheet of acrylic it would be about $200 - $250. You could make about 13,000 small squares. I think that is about $.03 each for ceramic and acrylic if my math is correct. Their is a lot of labor in them though. It takes about an hour to make 100 of the ceramic bases.