Although its not certain without inside information I don't see this question as opinion-based; anyone with knowledge of Apples historical pricing approach can answer it.

I ended up doing a sudo rm -R on the saved state in Trash, that seemed to do the trick. There was something weird going on, I wish I screencap'd it, but it's all good now! Thx again Stu you're a legend!

thx Bro, this is on an iMac, no external screen and only in one "Space"

Thx @Stuart I rly appreciate yr help but I had a problem. If the app is closed, the com.apple.Stickies folder disappears from Saved States. If I trash it while app is open, it doesnt fix the issue. If I try to empty trash while app open, I get msg "The operation can’t be completed because the item “data.data” is in use." So I'm thinking it still uses the file from the trash? What shd I do?

In case anyone wants a quick way to update the date-modified, duplicating a child file/folder then deleting does the trick…

That was an interesting link but no I didn't do any mucking about AFAIK :-)