That must have been a very, very, very long time ago, because FAL build parties are quite common these days and parts kit + new upper receiver is quite a popular buildup.
You can still get such parts kits for about that money, but the quality is lower than it used to be (best ones sold first). New receivers were made by Imbel and then after those were banned from import, by Hesse and Century (ugh) but now DSA is making new ones here in the US to the original specs. Entreprise Arms is also making some. Check out falfiles.com for more information, the forums contain all knowledge about the things.
Even semi-collectable ones are going for less than a damn M1A. This is a rare Israeli Heavy Barrel model like mine: http://www.falfiles.com/forums/showthread.php?s=610fc93bf99df45ce718467a3efc032f&;
threadid=313437
A complete light barrel metric version can be had for or less than $1000 already built.
I've been collecting C&R for years, I kind of lost track of what was going on in homebuild land.