What $50 buys you at the Huaqiangbei electronics market in Shenzhen, China
Discovering aliexpress was pretty awesome when I got started working with electronics hardware. Easily 1/5th the price of buying from an American store, in some cases as low as 1/10th the price. I've spent $500+ on stuff from aliexpress that would have been over $3k from a place like Adafruit, and I've had very few garbage pieces (though admittedly haven't used/tested a lot of it).