It's all about supply and demand, and not everyone with gil to throw around has the appropriate crafting level to make them. Well, they didn't anyway, but now...
Vue imprimable
Speaking of crafting gear, Artisan gear available from GCs. That's a nice boost to new 50s to speed up some crafting progression.
That, squadron dungeons, and beast tribe currency are my favorite parts of the patch.
Prisms were always cheap if you do the crafting levequests in Quarymill. The levequests mats all available from npc merchants and they reward the prisms mats with extra gils to buy Clear Prism. Essentially free without any gathering/hunting, except leves don't have ALC prism mats but its also available from Kobold tribe.
RE: Housing Storage
Apparently you cant store interior/exterior modeling stuff like wallpaper, roofing, flooring, etc.