"Cheap" is a relative term.
What I now see as cheap I probably didn’t then. I am sure that many here would consider the stuff I now see in my system as higher dollar to be "cheap."
But the first pair of 2 way speakers I bought back in ’93 or ’94 were NHTs for probably $300 & change from Crutchfield, and I thought that they sounded quite nice, up until the time I bought a pair of B&Ws.
Later on in the mid 90s I bought a Muse Model 2 Dac for around $1500 which I thought had a significant positive effect on my system.
A few years after that, the CD player I was using for a transport started doing goofy things on occasion, so I boughtt a Rega Jupiter for under 1k that I thought was a good value & performer.
My first tube amp (in ’94) was a Cary SLA 70, and I seem to remember it being around 1500. I still have it & fell back on it while I was working on my bigger tube amp and I still like the sound.
In ’99 I bought a second hand Cary SLP90 for 1k and I absolutely loved that preamp.