You can buy 5 S1 for less than 2k now. And bitmain is still making good money off the units. Chip design costs were recouped after the first couple thousand units shipped. They are printing money.
Except you can't. BitMain are out of stock of the S1 including 112bit.
Yes, they continually come in and out of stock. You can also buy them on ebay or at any of the other websites that sell them that have stock. Just because YOU don't know where to buy them doesn't mean you can't.
I have 3 S1s and a batch two S2 coming this week. I
know where to buy them, lol. I was just stating that they were currently out of stock.
And since no one from BitMain has said anything recently about new batches being produced, there is no assurance that they will continue to have S1s readily available or if they've been phased out.