this of course is TOTALLY less, if you run dailies on multiple characters, with the means of P tokens, you can get 10 transmuter charges a day. If you ran dailies on 10 noobs a day that is 100 a day, which would take 50 days to get enough charges... and not spend a dime.
Your friend is plain wrong. It is NO where near that expensive, if he had said 200-500... MAYBE possible, depending on when it was made, if T5s were easily acquired or if he had to use T4s, or lack of sales. Even with T4s though you only multiple by 3, so only $180 bucks. Even if he says it was when only T3 was out there, that is still again 3 times more, at $540 dollars.
So we are still no where near 1/10th the cost that he claims.