And now that government funding sources like IMLS, CLIR, NEH, NARA and LoC have been nuked and/or crippled, things are unlikely to get better any time soon, especially for collaborative research projects that have no immediate commercial benefit.
My uncle gave me an uncut sheet of dollar bills as an xmas present when I was maybe 9 or 10. Many years later, I still remember that feeling of astonishment -- ranks among one the great Christmas gifts of my childhood.
My current Vuescan license is from 1999. And I think that one was just to replace an older serial due to some upgrade on their end. It's probably the most bang for the buck of any software I've actually purchased.
I don't do much scanning anymore, but I do have an ancient Nikon CoolScan 35mm scanner that's probably at least 20 years old now. I get it out every few years to scan something I found and, with Vuescan, it still works remarkably well.
Although the last time I fetched it out from a storage container by our barn (I really should store it in the house) I found the negative strip scanner wasn't working anymore, but the slide adapter did and that was good enough for the task at hand.
1. https://www.sram.com/en/rockshox/models/sp-rvb-axs-a2