I’m sure there were high-end speakers made ingeniously and with exacting standards that warranted high prices and reverence by the community back then, but to look at tear downs of many of the speakers shown in here, I find it difficult to believe that there was really all that much justification for very high prices.
Particle board, paper cones, magnets, simple circuits. Or improved materials and gold plated contracts. Solid wood with nice wood grain stained and chrome or flat black fasteners.
Sure, R&D, scarcity of some materials, labor costs for hand made components. There’s some justification there. Some. But not all that much compared to how products are made in any industry.
Worth $300? $3000? $30,000 a pair?
Hmmm.
Just curious - have you ever built your own speakers or are you looking at this topic from high atop the left peak of Mount Dunning-Kruger?
I’ll give you two guesses, and the first doesn’t count.
So many people in this hobby that think solid wood is an improvement over MDF or Particle Board, or that the complexity of a crossover circuit has anything to do with its quality.