ebay or pawn shop is the way to go, you can find snap on there for less than a new blue point ratchet,
as far as quality, i have a gearwrench 3/8 ratchet that is almost identical to my snap on 3/8 F80 ratchet and ive "tested" it out with a 4 foot cheater bar on a frozen crossmember bolt and it didnt strip the gears, unlike my crapsman ratchets which would break just by looking at them
so the gearwrench seems to be decent quality to me but only time will really tell