Yes, If and when I start producing these to sell $1000.00 USD will be the cost of a finished unit. Trust me, I know it sounds crazy expensive for what it is and I'll never dispute that. You have to consider a lot of things though. The build cost alone is a couple hundred dollars, varying depending on how much stuff I need to order, shipping costs, etc. Then you have to figure that each unit is hand built by me, or some other modder like Zenloc for example. It really takes A LOT of time/work invested to get a finished product. Even if someone got really good at doing this the best they'd be able to do is a portable every 2-3 weeks, and even that is wishful thinking. I'm not sure how many hours I have into these but I can tell you its a shit-ton.
All that being said. Yes, I will make a bunch of these up and sell them. That's been my plan for a long time. I'm not going to dedicate my life to it though. Meaning that Its going to be something done in my free time and not rushed along like production with a deadline. It may take me 2 years to make up 10 of them, I cant really say. I have other projects that I'd love to work on also (I'm already planning a Wii laptop and an original XBOX laptop). Zenloc and I are looking into ways to produce the cases in a faster/easier manner, which would eliminate about 70% of the work that goes into this. If we end up being able to make them faster or actually have the cases made it would speed up the process a lot and possibly reduce the end asking price a bit. I'm not going to get my hopes up though.
Honestly, if you asked me if I would pay 1000$ for one of these I'd tell you that I probably wouldn't. I love the GC and all but man, that's a lot of cheese! But, I know I can do it myself for half the cost or so and end up with a pretty decent looking, working end product. Plus its something I like to do already. I'd recommend to anyone willing to invest a bit of time to do it themselves. Its so much more gratifying doing it yourself than buying one, especially with such a high price tag. The Benheck, Modretro and Modded by Bacteria forums all have a ton of wonderfully useful modding information/guides for every system scattered across them that helps a ton when working on projects like this. I'd recommend checking them out if the price of one of these has you cringing