It's a not as easy as that, @Teammccalla (what's your name, BTW?).
Not everybody likes the same thing. The Konis you (and I) like would be too harsh for some guys and not stiff enough for others. Regardless, more expensive parts are no guarantee that they're significantly better.
You don't always get what you pay for, but you always pay for what you get.
The "good stuff option" idea assumes that there are better parts out there and that the builders are just cutting corners to increase profit. Bear with me for a long and boring story.
Before BaT, and before a lot of the new guys came to the hobby, Intermeccanica was the undisputed high-water mark for 356 replicas. Henry Reisner tried mightily to do exactly what you advocate. In talking with him, he said that by far the hardest part about being in the business was the parts that were available for him to use. He either needed to make or remake nearly every part. Carey from Beck or Greg from VMC would tell you the same thing today.
Henry showed me what was involved in getting door handles with lock barrels in them (something people were asking for, "How hard could it be?" they asked). He bought the door handles everybody uses and immediately tore them apart. He bought lock barrels, and fabricated (or had fabricated, which is way harder than it sounds) buttons that would accept the lock barrels. He sent the handles out to be rechromed (to Mexico, if memory serves). When all of the parts were back from chrome, he'd reassemble the entire handle and put it in a box for use with a build down the road.
He made his own windshield frames. We all griped about the gauges until he and Carey from Beck commissioned, designed, and ordered the much better gauges now available. Shortly afterward, the manufacturer made them availably to anybody (after Henry and Carey had paid and worked to have them as a proprietary item). The same thing happened to Greg Leach with the Vintage 190 wheels - Greg paid for all of the setup, and now anybody can buy them from Mobelwagen or EMPI (and do, because they save $10 a wheel).
Back to Henry and trying to buy the very best - with every brake set he bought, he'd throw out the bearings and buy Timken or National replacement bearings and races, and put them in. He didn't trust the Chinese bearings that came with the sets. He'd double the price of the brakes just by trying to get bearings that didn't fail at a 10% (or 30%, or whatever) rate. Regardless, if I'm not mistaken, neither company (Timken or National) makes bearings for old VW Beetles anymore. I bought two CB brake-sets last winter and tried to do the same thing. I ordered FAG "German quality" bearings (FAG is a German company). I got FAG bearings.... made in Vietnam.
The point is, even when I'm trying to install nothing but the best (with cost as no object), I bump up against what is possible with the available parts.
To the shifter in question - I bought mine when Vintage Speed was just starting out, back around the turn of the Millennium. At that time, Ming had a great product - it worked well, it was priced at about $175, and the builder was accessible and amendable to customization (want a shorter handle? No problem!). Now, Vintage Speed is a victim of their own success. Ming keeps changing the design of something that worked perfectly, and keeps raising the price to the point of absurdity. His new shifters are $323, FOB Taiwan, and apparently don't work like they did in 2005.
20 years ago, Intermeccanica would build you a replica with a stable fiberglass body cured under UV light - with flat, Glasruit German paint, a 911 front end with Porsche brakes, a huge trunk, Spineybeck leather interior, with electric side-windows that rolled up and down and a high-quality soft-top on a scissor-frame that worked, all built on a purpose-built frame, with an air-cooled 911 engine and transaxle for over $100k, if every option-box was ticked. They were amazing cars - but they were not perfect, because nothing ever can be, and the platform has limitations baked into the cake.
Everybody complained about the price, and scoffed at those of us who "paid the premium, just for the name". Nobody thought of these as real cars, and at the time, Kirk and Mary would build you a fun and frisky replica for $25K. The build quality would never be mistaken for a Lexus, but that wasn't what they were. We joked about it, because we were all in this as a cheap and fun hobby. Nobody had any idea we'd be where we are today.
The builders are in this to make a living. It doesn't seem like it, but there is a limit to what most sane people will pay for a plastic clown car with a fancy lawn-mower engine, and there's a limit to how long you can spend chasing the last 5% of what is possible.
Prices and quality follow a parabolic curve. From 0% to about 75%, the price/quality relationship is linear - every dollar spent increases quality a corresponding amount. From 75% to about 90%, the costs start to climb precipitously with the quality increasing only marginally. At 90%, prices double and redouble for very little movement. At 95%, the cost line goes nearly straight up, and the money spent may not have any increase in quality. Past 90%, a builder is just spraying the money-hose on a project, and there's nobody anywhere who's going to pay 2x - 10x for no appreciable increase in outcome.
The sweet-spot is somewhere in the 75%- 85% range, where people can see their money at work. High end builders and restorers can push up on 90%, if their clientele are not "value oriented" (cheap). After 90%, it's never going to pay - and the only people who do it are hobbyists who want to play.
That's a poor way to make a living.
The good guys left in this business are doing the best they can to provide customers value for their investment and they have waiting lists measured in years, so they must be doing something right. Increasing costs without necessarily increasing quality in some measurable way is a way to lose goodwill and decrease profit.
You don't always get what you pay for, but you always pay for what you get.
