I think often we buy stuff and after using it for a time you reflect back and say "Wow that was a good X for the money!". Doesn't matter if it was a gun or truck or whatever. I know one guy bought a Mercedes and drove it about 22 years and over 300K miles with only maintenance costs like fuel, oil, tires, etc. One day he was remarking it was an amazing car for the money, and it was an expensive car when he bought it.
I do have my Taurus PT1911 experience. I was one of the first people in my area to buy one. It was a $499 thing at the time. Still got it.
Looks great on the surface. Has bunches of stuff people were paying extra for. Beavertail, Heine sights, FLGR, checkering of the front strap, checkered flat MSH, ambi thumb safeties, long trigger with overtravel adjustment, Series 80 mechanical firing pin safety, safety lock on the hammer, S/N on frame/slide/barrel and other stuff I forget. Granted several of those things are loveit/hate it, like Series 80, FLGR, lock on hammer, etc. Still a lot of crap for the money.
I shot it and it was not bad. Let my friends shoot it and many of them went out and bought one. Looked like a good deal for the money. Almost to a friend they all had problems with theirs. Safeties fell off, FTF, FTE, etc. etc. Then several had horror stories about dealing with Taurus customer support or maybe the lack of it. These days mine stays in the back of the safe most of the time and I am careful if I take it out and shoot it who I go out with. So was it a good deal since I ended up making a bunch of shooty buddies unhappy.
Here is me shooting 6 rounds at 15 yards with it.
And about the same time 6 rounds with one of those overpriced Colts. This was an XSE LW Commander which was about an $800 thing back then. Again 6 rounds at 15 yards. Same expensive target.
For me the Colt was a better deal for the money.