Well, here I am.... LOL
So far I have less than $280 in mine and I am about halfway through building my own lower.
Today I ordered up a RRA NM 2 Stage Trigger, which is really about the best damn trigger out there for a drop in AR part. That was $99 shipped to the door. Pictures on that by the end of the next weekend.
As for buying a done up Colt AR - That is a lot of coin to drop. I would say, for that price, I could probably build you 1 and a half, maybe two full AR's that didn't have the Colt name ( or the Colt mating problems with aftermarket parts ) for the same price.
There has been this BS mystique for awhile now that you NEED to drop large coin to get a "good" AR. I believed it too, until I really started looking into how easy it is to build an AR , and what the parts cost.
Nevermind the upper, put that out of your mind for a moment, the lower is only a couple of pins, a couple of springs and a couple of detents to hold things in place. I can train a chimpanzee to assemble an AR lower that is the famous "mil-spec" criteria ( because you buy and use Mil-Spec parts ) in an afternoon. Once you have a complete lower, you can buy ANY built upper, if you are so inclined, and match them up with a couple of tricks to have a very functional, very well built machine that will put rounds down range all day long.
Now, if you want National Match type of performance, yeah, you need to spend a little more money. But, you can buy a standard rifle, change a few parts out, and get some great accuracy without having to take out a second mortage.
Take a look at some of the AR parts kits at Brownell's and MidwayUSA. Then look and see what you can get a stripped upper and lower receiver for. You might surprised at how much over inflated the "finished" AR market really is....
JD