This is intended as advice and discussion, not criticism
That is simply not true, you must be looking in the wrong places. Also, your 'alternative' to not being able to spend your $1k on a good .com is to instead spend it on an unknown TLD with no sales? How is that a better investment?
If you spent time looking in the right places, you could get a .com for $1k and flip it for $2k without a problem.
Lowering your risk even further, if you spent 3 or so hours looking you could get a .com for low $xxx (say $200) that you could flip for mid to high $xxx (or more) so at least getting $400 or more and doubling your money.
So you could buy 5 .com domains for the price of your one and make a quick and tidy low $xxx
profit on
each of those 5. That's $1k profit + initial investment back, and thus
your money doubled. And most likely a chance to at least re-sell them for what you paid (if bought wisely), and they're low investment amounts, so no major risk either.
Then you have 2K, rinse and repeat and soon you have major investment money.
Bu instead you invest on a major
risk with nothing more than
hope because there are no sales to be able to research and establish a likely value. No sales in a TLD means
no-one is buying them, which means
no-one is selling them, which means you won't sell yours.
I hope you sell, and it is possible in the crazy world of domaining, but the facts and data show this was a huge risk with little chance, and that makes it a gamble. While some risk is unavoidable in trading and investing (in anything), and luck is very welcome, 90% of the time a gamble does not pay off.
Good luck though