As far as I can tell, the authors just made it up. Their logic process was probably something like this:
"Hey, what price should this cost? Is there something else like it that we can use for comparison? No? Well, nothing in the pricing chart is applicable, so what do I feel is a fair price. A few thousand gp feels way too low. A few dozen thousand gp feels way too high. So maybe somewhere in the middle. Hey, 10,000 gp is in the middle and it's a neat round number. It feels good; let's go with that."
Or something like that.
Remember, the first rule of pricing magic items is to look for a similar item and base your price on that. You don't even use the price chart unless you cannot find something else to compare your new item with. In other words, the pricing chart is a last resort for calculating item prices.
Why?
Because some prices in the book just don't follow the chart. Other prices should NOT follow the chart. The developers themselves have said this on numerous posts.
Knowing that, it's a difficult (impossible) task to try to reverse-engineer the price of every item in the rulebooks in order to make them conform to the pricing chart. It just won't work.
This is one of those items that doesn't work, so just take it at the listed value and use it for a pricing model for any custom items that resemble it.
Owner - D20 Hobbies
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If you are using the charts, you jumped to the very last resort step first.
Items are priced by comparing them to other items.
If there are no similar items, compare them to their power level. (This is the step DM_Blake is illuminating.)
If you can't find a similar item or item of similar power level, jump to chart.
In all fairness, Stone of Good Luck is probably overpriced, but it is also a direct import from 3.5. Interestingly the item was identical in 3.0 as well, except it was half the price, which seems more reasonable to me. Frankly, the save portion of the luckstone doesn't seem like it should be more than 4k, and 6k for the misc bonuses seems pretty steep, so even 10k is hard to get to. Probably why I have never seen one of these purchased in any game I've ran or played in.
To answer your question on the custom item you want, your two answers are actually right in a way. The first example, a weapon with an enhancement bonus costing 18,000 is actually exactly one half of the second price, representing a non-standard bonus to attack and damage (hence twice as much)
So basically, something that gives a luck bonus to attack and damage should cost twice as much as something that gives an enhancement bonus to attack and damage. Double this again if it is a slotless item.
The fact that working it out by the spell rules works in this particular case is just chance though, as many spells won't map to the basic bonus charts nearly so well, which is why spell level * caster level etc. should be the very last way you use to work out a reasonable price.
In all fairness, Stone of Good Luck is probably overpriced, but it is also a direct import from 3.5. Interestingly the item was identical in 3.0 as well, except it was half the price, which seems more reasonable to me. Frankly, the save portion of the luckstone doesn't seem like it should be more than 4k, and 6k for the misc bonuses seems pretty steep, so even 10k is hard to get to. Probably why I have never seen one of these purchased in any game I've ran or played in.
To answer your question on the custom item you want, your two answers are actually right in a way. The first example, a weapon with an enhancement bonus costing 18,000 is actually exactly one half of the second price, representing a non-standard bonus to attack and damage (hence twice as much)
So basically, something that gives a luck bonus to attack and damage should cost twice as much as something that gives an enhancement bonus to attack and damage. Double this again if it is a slotless item.
The fact that working it out by the spell rules works in this particular case is just chance though, as many spells won't map to the basic bonus charts nearly so well, which is why spell level * caster level etc. should be the very last way you use to work out a reasonable price.
It was too cheap in 3.0. EVERYBODY bought one.
Remember that the stone works even in your pocket. It doesn't take up a slot. So you could buy a Cloak of Resistance +2 for just 4,000gp. If you want to upgrade that cloak to +3 you pay another 5,000gp. Instead, for the exact same price, you could just buy a luckstone and put it in your pocket and get the same benefit because it stacks with your cloak AND you get the +1 to all the other misc. stuff.
Everybody did that.
The fact that it stacks with other items AND doesn't consume a slot made it valuable. It's still valuable for those reasons in Pathfinder, but it is a bit more expensive.
They doubled the price when they wrote 3.5 and it stopped being a mandatory item for everyone, but it's still a good item at mid-levels.
Works out just about right.
I posted this just earlier today, but I'll gladly do it again.
LUCK BONUS
Luck bonus on all ability checks: (bonus^2) x 4000gp
Luck bonus on every skill check: (bonus^2) x 4000gp
Luck bonus to every save: (bonus^2) x 2000gp
Luck bonus to Armor Class: (bonus^2) x 2500gp
Luck bonus on Attack rolls: (bonus^2) x 2000gp
Luck bonus on damage rolls: (bonus^2) x 2000gp
The price of the bonus to all ability checks and bonus to every skill check is derived from the Luckstone. The sum of those bonuses is 8000gp, so they can be any variation of x+y=8000gp.
The rest of the prices are taken from the Magic Item Creation table, which also lets us know that unslotted items cost twice as much and does not have a +50% per extra ability.
Edit: Remember that Initiative is an ability check, so that might be the reason it should cost a bit.
Almost forgot your question.
Your pal's item would cost:
(3^2) x 2000 gp
+
((3^2) x 2000 gp) x 1.5 (for a slotted item)
=
45000 gp
Price: 45000 gp
Cost to create: 22500gp
Even if a spell is used as a requirement, you do not base the price on the spell level/caster level when it's about static bonuses. (that often leads to exploits, like a continuous Shield)