The detail obviously won’t be as fine when laser-cutting ply compared to that hand-cut cork art, but over the surface of a stick it’ll look pretty schweet. It ain’t cheap though, a four layer relief in 400x300 costs about $90 in materials and laser time! It could cost even more with acrylic support sheets if you wanted to have large voids (where a clear sheet is cut to fill the hole to prevent flexing of the top surface).
Conversely, printing a couple of art sheets, cutting them, and sandwiching them between a couple of stacked acrylic layers to create a foreground/background effect costs half that.
I’m really no artist, i’m a builder, but if you’ve got creativity and the wherewithal to create the right vector files, i could put together stuff like this:
That’s clearly quite an expensive piece, combining cutting of different materials and etching, and many layers of it. You’d probably want to keep it to four or so layers for an arcade stick, or the thickness of the piece will start to intrude on the stick shaft length.
I’ll have some simple stuff to show off when the next cutting run is done, but it takes me a while to art. 
@JoyBoyDesu If you want to discuss a commission, flick me a PM. The plain small case, with raw aluminium edging, acrylic, and mounting hardware is $110 + up to $20 shipping within Aus.
The cost of the art is variable based on the design as stated above, but I’ll be able to cover some costs since I’m still setting up the production side.
Incidentally, here’s a t-shirt art layer:
http://i.imgur.com/mg6xPBI.jpg
I didn’t have any sacrificial FGC-appropriate shirts, but you get the idea. Fabric, leather, wallpaper… a carpet offcut; anything can be used to generate a bit of visual texture.
Remove the clear layer and harder wearing materials can be used directly. You could have a leather-topped stick to go with that writing desk.
