I'm personally not sweating the lack of an interior, since I don't do anything with these outside of display... for $500 I think it's sadly a fair deal and the free shipping was helpful. Generally lego kits cost about $0.10 per brick, with over $5,000 pieces, it's pretty much in line with their other sets.
A Gold Threepio would have been nice though.
I've got all the other kits except the Death Star - hopefully within the next few months I'll pick that one up too. My Star Destroyer is the only one that is boxed up at the moment. I just don't have a place for it.