Wait no one is questioning the fact the company only had one brand new plate, or that the one plate costs the rough equivalent of 10,000 dollars? Who buys a freaken 10G plate and just lends it to the company staff to use? Lol
My guess is that it was some sort of ornamental plate. Like, sometimes people will just buy nice-looking stuff and prop it up and if that's some nice, rare or even one-of-a-kind plate from some master craftsman... 10k is probably still unreasonable, but closer to the ballpark of what it'd actually cost.