I've been reading up on Round the World tickets for the last few months, including the FAQs here, and I am still fairly confused about this stuff. I finally figured that I am probably looking at this wrong, and maybe I should ask here either for resources or clarification.

Looking at One World Explorer tickets, it appears to me that I can pretty much get a better price on the tickets by buying the segments separately. An example of my known Itinerary in 2005 is as follows (with home being either the LAX, SNA or LGB Airports):

Home-JFK-Home-YVR-Home-MSY-Home-JFK-Home-MAD-AMS-Home-HNL-Home

Now I realize that much of these trips are domestic, North America trips. But the total cost of airfare for these trips in Coach (with a few domestic upgrades) is $1,800, or in F for $2,900. Assuming that I added in a stop or two in Asia, and did some of the North America trips on separate tickets outside a ONE ticket, and started my itinerary somewhere like Cairo or Bangkok, I would still be paying a minimum of $3,500 for coach or about $6,000 for F, right?

From a purely mileage perspective, you can buy trips separately at about a cost of 3-4 cents per mile. Can a ONE get you a lower dollar-per-mile ratio? It seems to me that, at 3 cents per mile, a ONE ticket would have to cost $1,500 or less to be worth the price (it seems that it's not likely to get more than 50,000 q-miles on a round the world ticket). Or is the cost of these tickets beside the point?

Obviously, I need to learn more, but I'm not sure where to look for the info.