Thanks for looking out guys, unfortunately I missed the GameStop deal, I'm sure if I'm patient enough I'll be able to land a dock set in the $40-50 range shipped and I'll be happy enough with that. Most eBay sellers seem to want about $70, but the ones that do sell for non-BIN prices are more in my range.
I have some used joy-cons ordered and in transit, paid $80 shipped for 4. I understand the drift issue as I actually had the chance to test the unit with a pair of controllers. The left was fine, the right had major issues with the stick stuck drifting hard right. Made me dizzy trying the Pikmin 3 demo while the camera was spinning...
I ended up swapping out the case back because all the screwposts were busted up on the old one. I lifted the digitzer and that isn't where the moisture is so it must be betweeen the LCD layers and the non-working digitizer must be a separate issue. I'll use it as is for as long as the screen wants to function and just budget the $50 or so to replace the whole digitzer and LCD together later. Are there good games that make use of the handheld touchscreen anyway?