Sorry about that. This thread is long overdue an update.

17 orders and 5139 pieces later, everything is ordered with all but the last 500 already in my possession. Total cost is just under £550 which is way under my £700 guesstimate.

90% of the pieces were ordered in the first 4 orders but the last 10% were a pain in the neck to get and took 13 orders to get hold of.

14 orders were from Bricklink, 2 from the Lego Replacement Parts Service and 1 from Lego Pick a Brick.

If anyone was looking to do anything like this, I suggest the Copy and Paste method from the Bricklink inventory page into Excel, get a rough idea of the cost of each part from Lego or Bricklink and work out a guesstimate price and see if it is feasible. The Bricklink Wanted Lists are fantastic and make life so much easier.

Regarding the still available 10188 set, I suspect $200 is a bit on the low side but would be interested to see how you got on. However, some of the forums think that this set is to finish production shortly so it might be worth buying the full set retail while you still can and selling the minifigs on ebay to bring the price down.

Meanwhile, despite my insistance that this was a "one time only" thing, I am drawn towards the 10030 USC Star Destroyer.........