I don't think actuators are crazy overpriced really. It's true that if you are going to bother packaging them you are probably using decent-to-good quality ever

I don't think actuators are crazy overpriced really. It's true that if you are going to bother packaging them you are probably using decent-to-good quality everything, but that's what you want for non-toy projects anyway. And for toy projects if your budget is really tight no big deal to set up the encoder yourself on this one-off.