Well, I got my Mayflash stick off play-asia awhile back for like $50, with like $30 shipping. Then I see it now on Amazon for like $32, with roughly $10 for shipping. Figures.
The stock joystick and buttons mine comes with are pretty crappy, but it seems to work ok for me now with my matching crappy skills. The case is very solid, it can be plugged into a ps2 or pc, with a converter it's supposed to work on dc, gc, xbox, and 360. Plus, there's 8 buttons instead of 6, good to have some to spare to try out different arrangements.
However, by itself all the pros are outweighed by the terrible joystick and buttons (for crying out loud, a ball-top that constantly is trying to unscrew itself?). This can be remedied by doing what I'm planning to do, to mod it putting in higher-quality sanwa or seimitsu joystick and buttons. This is a bit complicated (it's scaring me a bit...) but it's supposed to be a great stick to mod.
Now, as your first stick I'm not sure you should follow my example and get this one, but this is the only one I can give a critique of, so maybe the others can give you advice on other sticks. Hori are supposed to have good sticks. If you're willing to mod, the Mayflash one can become a good stick (some people prefer it modded to many other good sticks, but not everyone wants to do some soldering and stuff like that.
Still trying to figure out which JLF stick would be best to get, btw. Input appreciated on this would be appreciated