The same old arguments...

That it was still expensive in Europe doesn’t detract from the relative cheapness and hobbyist-ness.

I also only had an 8088 back in 1991. But the 80386 and systems with it had already been on the (american, I guess) market for years (1985 and 1986, respectively). And you kinda need one for Unix, the 80286 and below don’t have the infrastructure to support it easily. The m68k series, also a favourite by hobbyists at that time, did, so it was pure chance Torvalds did Intel first.