What is interesting is, that when I shopped around, I found quite a lot of FPGA PCI board that although dang expensive, had ridiculous computing power and pretty heavy amounts of RAM. Some of them used for development or medical imaging.
The only thing they've got going for them is that they're hyper efficient, with the same hashing as a high-end GPU, but at a fraction of the energy usage, and they're a lot more expensive. They're only worth it if you were planning on running them dozens at a time, if they were as cheap as a regular GPU people would be jumping on them.
Well also with the rise of the ASIC "soon-to-be" market, people dropped their FPGA's or bought them up already. Also, many of the FPGA projects were self contained and either a single guy or a small team did the builds and managed/tested the hardware and software based off of the community. The work they put into those projects was immense, so they made a few batches, shifted to another project, and then stopped.
If you want a FPGA now, you're SOL. I've been looking for the last 3-4 months and they're all at least $600+. Many of them like the Icarus or ModMiner are selling for double the cost they were sold at, if you're lucky enough to find one.
Also most of the FPGA sales are taking place in BTC, which for newcomers is a problem. Otherwise the guys who are selling their used FPGA's are doing so very quickly.
The rest of those people are using theirs until they get a ASIC.
As for me, I think the ASIC market is annoying since BFL and Avalon both have their downfalls. I am currently in the development of a FPGA of my own, given I am developing my Master's Thesis on FPGA's. Avalon is also selling off a large quantity of their chips, so I may do a DIY build soon, which is right now the cheapest and most convenient method to actually mine a decent amount before everyone else gets their ASIC rigs (Since Avalon is selling their rigs for ~74BTC and BFL hasn't shipped a single unit).
