I've been involved in building props/costumes for about the last six months and at first i thought I'd be able to pick up a cheap costume and it'd look just fine. However I remembered and old saying my Grandpa would tell me when I was in such a situation, "you get what you pay for." If you want a fairly inexpensive costume, try a custom Mandalorian like Boba or Jango Fett. You can pick up a whole set of Sintra armor for around a hundred dollars, and they don't look that bad for the money. What about trying to become one of the Imperial Guards (the red suited guys) as once you buy the helmet, cloak and a homemade force pike and that's basically enough to get by with. I finally realized that screw it, I'm just going to try and put together quality fiberglass armor etc that will hold up for years to come-plus I won't have to buy things two and three times like I did when I bought my Rubies Deluxe bucket(which i just sold) rather than do some research and buy one of Sarges to begin with. So good luck next year, you've definitely in the right place to learn alot about prop and costume buildifor all budgets if you look hard enough...