His PM to you for $1450 probably include tax and shipping.
Website price is $1299 listed, but when you add it to cart it will show shipping if you ask for a shipping quote. I still see nothing wrong in his quote.
Also your stating he used the
emoticon, and I'm just as confused because the price he quoted you seems to be lower than the webprice. Customer is asking if it's different than webprice, and yes the price he gave you is indeed different than webprice. (assuming my calculations and the webprice mockup i did was correct)
MSRP = $1299
Tax (according to Pyspeed's location) = 8.375%
Shipping (according to Pyspeed's website shipped to a random norcal zip code) = $175
Total = $1582.79 Webprice
So basically in the end, it's your perception causing a whole discussion which has nothing to do with the vendor himself. I'm guessing thread was delete to clean up the mess regarding price confusion because of your initial post.
Anyways, just my .02cents