Man, I have to absolutly agree with all you wrote!!
My case is little bit different because I buy only CE's from my favourite series or RPG's CE's and only for PC. However this year is money killer for everyone collecting CE's without a doubt. As you said, CE's are getting much more bigger and more expensive and for what? For example Skyrim is totally overpriced and big as hell. I love figurines (especially dragons) and big artbooks, but that's almost everything in this CE and they want such a lot of money for it. They should create smaller and cheaper CE's in general, even with less content. I'm satisfied, if CE has following : 1) special packaking (steelbook, wooden chest, kind of book etc.) 2) artbook (must have for me) 3) soundtrack (2nd must have for me) and finally some special item related to given game (rings, figurines, necklaces, in-game items replicas etc.). In case of RPG's I also want a MAP in every single packaging! Of course CE can have more additional and special content, I would love it, but not for the price of ridiculous cost and even bigger packaging. I can understand it in cases like Witcher 2 Collector's Edition, the one with lot of quality and really nice content for affordable price (my was about 95 Euro). In this case the content and size is in direct proportion to price and that's I think the right way.