In amateur astrophotography narrowband filters are used to reveal interstellar ionized gas clouds.
In this case you can see hydrogen nebulae as red blobs in the spiral arms around M31.
Well for the high cost, apart from producing them is technologically challenging, it is just simple economics. The market for these filters is still small compared to other things, so the price must be higher to compensate production and development.
Is the [OIII] filter really doing anything for you? I think it's really only showing continuum, in which case you'd be better served with a wider bandpass.
No not for this target. As I use a dual narrowband filter I‘ll always get OIII as well, but as you said in this case it just shows the normal continuum.
I shot this data to combine it with RGB in the future, but I liked how M31 looks with just narrowband so I wanted to share anyway.