Yeah that was the joke. I'm guessing something on the order of $50USD to produce, including cost of parts. $50 is a lot in China, it can be what some people earn in an entire month.
Anyway, I did more modding on the ET1000. Removed the stock gold colored grilles you see in pic 2 and replaced with some speaker cloth. Smoothed out sound more. It's starting to be nothing like a stock ET1000 and will continue in this direction when I make the adapter and run it like a normal bias Stax.