Oh, then please tell me where to get the parts that cheap! I always calculate with 60 euros buttons/stick, 50 euros for the case and 10 for USB encoder.
Do the case yourself and the case price will shrink from 50€ to 10€ I paid the buttons full price however I could find the joystick a bit cheaper on ebay for 15€ Also I've purchased just the amount of buttons I needed, 2 smaller ones for coin & start and 4 regular buttons as TGM and other arcade games I play don't need more. I'll post a tutorial one day when my stick will be totally finished. (I've used an arduino I already had for the USB controller part but 10€ is a good price for an USB encoder).
I'm not talking about building it yourself, just replacing components, which is a really simple process. I personally bought a crap stick for around $15 and put Sanwa stuff into it. That way you get both the casing and the PCB you need for USB output or whatever is appropriate. I don't know about Americas, but both http://www.arcadeworlduk.com/ and http://www.arcadeshop.de/ have decent prices on original hardware parts from the best manufacturers. You could literally buy 6 complete Sanwa JLF joysticks for the price of one of those high-end arcade sticks.
@Tomek: Yeah, its possible to save some money this way. But this it is not what I meant. In my opinion "Build the case yourself and hunt on ebay for the cheapest stick and buttons" is not a good advice for a beginner who wants to _buy a stick_. It will probably lead to disaster and a lot of time and money wasted. The tools to build this are above 100 Euro already. In my opinion it's only a viable way, if you take joy from the process of building something yourself. @Sumez: Can you advice a crap stick, where you can replace everything with Sanwa easily? I did this with a used Honcam Stick. Cannot advice this to a beginner, it is a lot of work. Will still be around 90-100 Euros, if you have to buy everything from scratch. More if you are lacking tools. Also short remark about http://www.arcadeshop.de/ because I already ordered there. They could not deliver half of the stuff I wanted and it took me about 4-5 month to cancel my order and get my money back. Might just be bad luck.
@TGGC Don't misunderstand what I said, these are Sanwa parts. It just doesn't bother me to wait a bit to find a nice offer (and the joystick was new). The guy selling the joystick on eBay lived in the area so I avoided the shipping costs by meeting him in person to make the transaction. A new Sanwa joystick is around 20€ so even if I bought it for 15€ it isn't a significant difference overall. For the buttons I bought them in a shop in Paris (the buttons were pricier than online but still cheaper than the total with shipping for just a few buttons from online stores). http://www.leshoparcade.com This can be true, but my parents have all the tools necessary so I paid nothing to use them. It's not that unusual to have a family member that has basic tools like a saw, a drill or sandpaper (and who knows how to use these). The MDF to I bought to make my joystick cost something like 2 or 3€, for me it was a viable option. @Sumez I agree with you that this is a nice option but you still need to find a $15 stick somewhere. I preferred the DIY/Arduino way also for the PCB as I'd like to use my stick not only on my computer or on my supergun, but also with modern consoles with USB and older ones like PS1/PS2 or my Wii and an adapter that supports everything is quite expensive. (I don't want to have to disassemble my stick every time I want to use it on something else).
It's just another point on the easy/cheap curve, you just have to decide how easy you want to go or how cheap you have to go.
