As for it's cost, the modern event deck did at least come with sleeves (and a box that could fit sleeved cards) and card-for-card, was well worth the $75 at the time of release.

While the premium deck series was also worth the money card-for-card on release, it was also fully foiled, but did not come with any sleeves, nor a box that could fit sleeved cards. That meant that the cards either rapidly dropped in value and condition or you had to go and buy sleeves/deck box for them to have even a chance of remaining even in Lightly Played condition.

For the record, I bought the Fire and Lightning deck. I loved it then and I love it now, but it could have been so much better of a product. I'd have gladly payed double MSRP for a more playable (or at least more durable) product.

My idea for this would have an MSRP that would vary based on the format (pauper event deck being considerably cheaper than Modern or Legacy event deck for obvious reasons), and would at minimum come with a deck box that fit the deck when sleeved, preferably coming with sleeves to be easily playable right out of the box. They would be a very basic, upgradable version of common deck archetypes in their given format. One year you'd have a Modern tron event deck, next a pauper mono-black control event deck, etc. The idea being to showcase the various types of decks that are actually played in a format to people that haven't been able to get into the format. No one would be expected to come close to winning events with one of these, they would be made as an entry point only.

Of course, having pauper event decks would probably require WotC to actually support the format in paper.