You should be able to get all the info on prices last year here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivkudPI1Y1w

If your goal is to get TOTY Mcdavid, then you should absolutely not buy the X factor. Building the TOTY from scratch probably wouldn't even cost 1.5 million. And then you'd have to fully upgrade the X factor too.

IIRC The only reason the X factor -> TOTY route was cheaper was just because of the sunk cost people had already put into the X factor and/or if you packed an untradeable X factor. If you are starting entirely from scratch, Im pretty certain the cheapest was to just build the TOTY straight up.

Im not 100% positive on this. But if you watch the video it should confirm what Im saying