My very very first kit was a cheap Japanese copy of a Slingerland-type jazz setup that my stepdad bought from a guy for $200. It was in a black diamond pearl wrap, the snare had been torn apart to use as a 14" tom (which sounded terrible), the hardware was sketchy, and the cymbals were the same sort of brass used in curtain rods - 12" hi-hats and a 12" crash/splash/ride. Those cymbals shredded like paper during normal use.
But the snare was a 1960's Ludwig Pioneer in blue duco. Still one of the best snares I've ever owned.
In a couple of years, my folks splurged for Christmas and bought me a Blackhawk kit from the Sears catalog. Not a Gretsch Blackhawk, though; Sears had taken that name and hung it on a Taiwanese generic kit. No matter. I ended up combining that kit and my first kit into a kind of home-improvement, do-it-yourself double bass kit. The picture shown is one of the few pictures I have left of that kit. I sold almost all of that kit in 1999 to buy my current Yamaha Stage Custom, including the Pioneer snare, which by itself netted $500. I still regret letting it go.