regarding the money issue, there are a lot of foam skis that are quite expensive when compared to their wood counterparts.
that said, what happened to all you rossi folks? we had a "what ski do you use" thread not to long ago and rossi had a lot of committed users. wonder where they all went?
the wood vs. foam issue will become less and less meaningful as more and more ski companies are using hybrid core components mixing in metal elements and so on. i still love a solid wood core to build around though.