I think you guys are playing extreme ends of the spectrum in terms of value. The former is not a very good use of miles, while the latter doesn't show actual value because unless you'd be willing to pay that much in cash, your miles don't equal the value you claim they do.

My typical example is SFO-ARN in Mid-October is $950 - $125 taxes+fees = $825. Mileage level = 60,000, so cpm is 1.3

I think that's a pretty fair level to value miles (especially considering the fact that I'm forgoing earning miles while flying on an award ticket). If you take that into account, that's 12,000 miles x 1.3 = $156. So $950 - $125 - $156 = $669 / 60,000 miles, which is 1.1 cpm.

So, I think for me a fair value is somewhere between 1.1-1.3, granted in the summer the fares are higher, but it's harder to get awards too, so it pretty much evens out.