Actually, it's probably hundreds of dollars these days--but the problems remain. As Peteski notes, what I see on my monitor is very likely different from what you see, and just as likely different from what Peteski sees. When I was doing brochures professionally, I spent a lot of time and money calibrating my previous Apple Cinema monitor to my printer's previous digital presses, although I had the use of his expensive digital colorimeter. Then, of course, my new Apple computer couldn't drive my old monitor and, even if it could, the results would not be the same. And my printer changed his digital press. We decided that, since my volume of work was falling off a cliff, we'd just hack it by approximating bit by bit by bit (pun intended), a little like calculus.
Matching even ONE monitor's RGB space to just ONE printer's CMYK space is a very perplexing process, despite all the standards. With landscapes and vivid colors, it's not much of a problem. But when you are trying to match grays--the most vexing of printing problems--you will go nuts, and eventually resort to my solution (?): print a grid of grays with almost random RGB values until my printer comes up with a closest match--assuming of course that the printer's print head is clean and clear.
My general observation about brick remains the same: it's darker than it photographs. I'd go with the 1:128, and use darker tints for variations. Once you light it up for photos, or just for looking at it on your layout, it will be brighter.
