SuperPinball's breakdown is closer to the reality. I disagree on a couple of the price points, but in general I think the overall price would be closer to $1,000 and further from $500. I'm a custom cabinet maker by trade, and recently built a repro sys11 cabinet. I haven't painted or stickered it yet; the CNC and lock-mitered corners/assembly took about a day. I can't say for sure how long the finishing process will take, maybe 2 days more. An expense we haven't addressed is shipping a completed cabinet, which I imagine would be fairly prohibitive.

I've heard differing points of view on this, but one camp wants a cabinet which is identical to what Williams made - which would involve the lock mitered corners. Theoretically, such a cabinet could be sent as a flat pack, but that would require that the end user be comfortable glueing and clamping the cabinet together, as well as fastening the bottom panel of the lower cabinet and back panel of the head box on their own. But you are then still on the hook for painting and decaling/stenciling, as lock mitered seams - strong and seamless and beautiful though they are - really want to be sanded out a bit after clamping in order to look their best.
Another approach would be to make the cabinets so that they could easily (but strongly) be assembled using knock down hardware - threaded inserts and bolts to assemble. This method has the advantage that it could be sent pre-painted, the drawback being that the corner joints would not be seamless. But if you need a new cabinet because you got a good salvage/restoration candidate with a dead box surrounding it and you mostly want to enjoy playing pinball, that seems to me a reasonably good solution.

What do you all think of that? I'd love to figure out a way to make my job help defray the cost of my hobby, and I could absolutely crank out some pin cabs, but I don't blame people for not wanting to spend four figures just for the box. What are you willing to compromise on? Serious inquiry.