I've looks at many many for sale ads, and I believe the threshold for good paint and straight body in NorCal is more like $3500. Definitely more than I thought. Getting a cheap straight body with crappy paint and then painting it will add a lot of extra time that doesn't make sense for me at the moment.
I'm now leaning towards charging on with my build, and keeping open the option to swap everything over to an NA in 2.5 years if I find myself out of other options.

 

*cough* vinyl *coughcough*

 

I regret selling my first Miata that I've spent a lot of time and effort getting to where it was almost perfect (for me). I was a stunning machine with everything working well, but it took me a lot of effort to get there and then a very small issue (gas smell in the cabin) put me over the the edge and I've sold it. I just couldn't stand taking parts off and putting them on, wrenching, spending weekends in the garage instead of doing something else. Regretted it ever since. Now I'm slowly trying to replicate my old setup in a new one (new to me NB) that has more miles, paint is not as good, had more problems than I could identify during a test drive when buying it, etc. The only good news here is that I think I've realized my original mistake - feeling burned out and thinking that selling it was a good idea.

 

Having helped reshell a heavily moded NA6, it really wasn't that bad to swap everything over and do the small mods/paint the engine bay and such while it was stripped was nice. And getting to sort out the mess the PO made of the wiring harness with it layed out in the garage was amazing. But the shell we got was stripped. No pannels, not wiring, no lights. It had the fuel tank, hard lines, and windsheild in it.

 

That's what worries me. I'm going to have in to my NB2 until I don't have a choice, and then I can do the swap if I have to.

 

Swap everything into a Prius C
I bet no cop would ever bother you again.