You could join the Garand Collectors Association as it counts as a DCM affiliated club. The info you get in the newsletters wouldn't hurt anyway.
http://www.thegca.org/
I had a SA Inc Garand a couple of years ago, and it's the only M1 I've ever traded away.
Not that it was a terrible rifle, but it cost almost double what a CMP Garand ran at the time, and was not twice as good...or even the equal in my opinion.
I only got it because I had some credit at a gun shop and that was the only thing they had that interested me.
I admit that it did shoot well. But other than that, I found it lacking.
The receiver is cast, which can be OK in some cases, but I think one of the best parts of the Garand is it's extremely strong receiver of 8620 steel. The gov't did some scary tests on them back in the day and failures were very rare.
My receiver had really shallow serrations cast in for the elevation knob of the rear sight, so it wouldn't hold zero well. They gave nothing even close to a "click", and more of a "squish".
I can also believe SA Inc was having a hard time getting parts as they said, because mine had some, uh, suspicious parts. Some minor parts were unmarked and apparently reproductions.
I do understand the desire to buy a new rifle with a warranty rather than a 60 year old rifle of unknown history that comes with zero warranty.
For the money, I'd try to get a rifle built by a Garand-smith on a USGI receiver. Tony Giaccobe (The Garand Guy) makes then up with brand new barrels and a 1-year warranty for $895 and up.
http://www.garandguy.com/issuegrade.htm
Some others are:
Deans Gun Restorations
http://www.dgrguns.com/index.html
Fulton Armory
http://www.fulton-armory.com/
Orion 7
http://www.m1garand.com/Garandparts.htm
If you go the CMP route, they are pretty good at taking care of people who have had problems with their rifles.
And, the worst problem you would run into would be a barrel that's so worn that it won't shoot well. A new barrel and installation runs from about $250 and up from a variety of places. A CMP gun at $495 plus getting a new barrel for $300 will give you a pretty good gun for around $800. I don't know what SA's were running, but probably more.
The best Garand forum I know of is the M1/M14/M1A section of Maj Dick Culver's Shooting Pages
www.jouster.com
