Over $200 was the final bid, with one of the ejection port buffers being defective (seller posted it as such) because the rubber had hardened over time.

IMO there is a market for a USA made alternative at this price point. With steel cased ammo from Russia vanishing for the forceable future, damaging every brass case fired from an AK based rifle makes me wince. I have been reloading this round since around 1990.

Limited demand for sure but even more limited supply.  I have 2 I bought from a gunshop in the Hudson Valley in the later 90s that supposedly bought out a ton of parts from the importer when they closed shop 8 or so years earlier.  Mags / bayonets and anything else really good were gone at that point and they only had some small parts left over.  I also got lucky and grabbed one off the EE 2 years ago for what I considered "reasonable" at the time dont remember but definitely not cheap.