SRX100 is the cheapest you can pick up new they sit around 600 or 700 bucks.

Why don't you like ASAs?

What is your favorite firewall brand or solution?

It is funny you say that since I had a tough time with IPSEC tunnels with cisco/checkpoint and cisco/watchguard.  The phases were identical yet I still had to troubleshoot for ages.  I will eventually have to set up the same with some SSG's but hopefully will have a better experience. 

The last time I messed with Checkpoint, I learned with R60-R70 on servers.  I never messed with their appliances.  I think Sil is right, there are a lot of VMware appliance to learn from as far as firewalls too. 

I have had experiences with CertificationKits and ebay.  It ended up costing me more to purchase all the pieces seperately on ebay when you factor in shipping and then i found i got units with wrong memory that would not support some of the features i needed and did not have ios to do some of the commands i needed either.  Luckily this was when I just started with a basic 2 router kit.  The other big difference I found with CertificationKits is you don't have to spend hours trying to figure out all the little peices you need.  I don't know about you, but for me my time is valuable and ordering things from 15 different ebayers and tracking them was a PIA.  CertificationKits also included lots of very valuable study materials like their lab workbook, a cram type sheet and a subnetting workbook that really helped me understand subnetting.  Those books had to be worth $30 to $40 each and the cram sheet I would guess $10.  So when I took all that into consideration CertificationKits was basically the same price as eBay and a lot less hassle.  BTW, they helped me upgrade the kit I already had and I probably shot them 5 or 6 questions on concepts that were not making sense to me and they answered all the questions within an hour or so.  So that also made me very happy.