Is new better than old?

Older speakers in good working order in general may represent better values but that really doesn't matter. Nor does it matter that in general speaker technology may have improved over the years, albeit for a premium The devil is in the details. You can do equally well either way. The key is to do your homework to determine the best fit for you at a particular price point. If you buy used and do not overpay, you can try something different without taking a big financial hit. Speakers should fit into your room and listening habits like where you listen from well. You should have an amp capable of driving them to the max, not the minimum or even somewhere in between. Often you will not know what they really sound like in your setup until you try them.

Also dealer blowouts of models being updated, discontinued, etc.

I have version one of the these: (tempting me as backup pair)

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ddspkrfull&1280552790&/Gemme-Audio-Tanto-V2-Price-low

An older Dynaudio would be better than a new PSB, Monitor Audio stuff. Anyway, here is a boutique brand which makes some of the most cost effective yet high performance speakers:
http://www.selahaudio.com/

personally I'd go new or not too old, as per my comments above.

IF YOU HAVE REASONABLY GOOD POWER 150 – 250WPC, I’D THINK WELL ABUOT THE USHER SPEAKERS.

I HEARD THOSE SPAEAKERS AT A NEARBY DEALERSHIP SOME TIME BACK AND WAS SUMMARILY IMPRESSED. Great esthetic. Very good range. Powrd by a tube pre and tube amp… Cary I believe. Not to big an amp either. Very nice. Nice sound. I’d have opted for the bigger ushers but they are simply too big and I thought they would be too tuff a load for 100wpc tube amps. But they do look great IMHO.

I’ve had loads of BW, the top Monitor Audio series, VR4 JRs, Several Phase Tech units, a few Silverlines too. The room is as key IMO as is the power you’re going to feed them with. Think about those two items. A lot.

Buying used isn’t a terrible notion at all. The shipping issue is the big deal in that equation. If it’s a very good seller, and the packing is in great shape… not just the orig packing either.. you ought to come out oK. That is the rub on speakers. Shipping. There’s two of them instead of just one box. So twice the risk. Bigger ones cost more to ship.

Also think about just where are you headed in audio. Always gonna have SS power? Wanna do tubes? Big diffs right there at times. Not really sure just now? Maybe, maybe not? Shoot for units that have steady imp curves which don’t fall below 6 ohms.. have a 90 or higher Eff rating… and the world becomes your oyster. SS or Tubes will then work. Higher numbers in each range enables you still more choices in power amps… as well as the need for less of it too.

The Usher is as popular a speaker as any other I suppose… and after all, this is just one of maybe many more or at least some more most likely. So don’t fret too awful much on it and get what you like hearing the best… but do take your amp if possible to try any out… again, if possible. Bass gets more predominant in a smaller room, and less so when room size increases. Remember that when auditioning..

Have fun.

People telling you that speakers have come a long way in the last decade are full of it.

The average commercial speaker is still two or three cheap Danish danish drivers stuck in a dynamics-killing MDF box selling for 10-20x the cost of the drivers.

Of course there are many commercial speakers that can't be described that way. But count me among those with a lot of experience who believe that modern speakers have really made a wrong turn. Yes, if you value extremely flat frequency response *above all else* they do a respectable job, but that is not at all what makes for a convincing reproduction of live acoustic music.

This leads us to high-efficiency speakers. Which are, yes, represented among modern manufacturers - too many to list. Although many are hair-shirts and many more have some serious weaknesses, most who enjoy and are regularly exposed to live, unamplified acoustic music and experience a good HE speaker come to prefer it to any of the run-of-the-mill non-HE names. You just cannot get proper macrodynamics out of speakers in the ~90 dB/W range no matter the power you feed them, as thermal compression has its way. At least this was an unescapable conclusion for me in A/B-ing such speakers against HE brethren, be they back horns, front horns, or simple OB. The latter make drum thwacks sound like drum thwacks, the former sound like a muffled thwack in comparison. I can certainly enjoy music on these types of speakers - especially more compressed music not attempting to mimic unamplified instruments - they just don't create as real a reproduction.
I'm well-off on a rant now but here is where it is going: there are many vintage speakers available that are HE and sound better than anything currently made at comparable prices. I'm speaking of Altecs and a couple of the Klipsch models although I don't care overall for most Klipsch (shouty).

I would take Altec Model 19s which can be had for $1000-$2000 over any current production speaker I can think of up to... well, let's just say quite a bit more than that. To say that modern drivers are "better" than the drivers in this speaker is a lot of hooey if you value timbre, tone, nuance, and dynamics. There are good modern drivers but the drivers in speakers like the 19 are fabulous in absolute terms. They have alnico magnets which are superior to any form of neo (alnico magnets are extremely pricey today) and paper and other natural fibers (hemp) trumps all synthetic cone materials for natural timbre (as smart companies like Audio Note and Zu, and manufacturers using drivers from Fostex, Lowther, etc., know). It is simply nonsense to say that modern drivers outclass these types of drivers.

Downside to a speaker like the 19? Condition may not be great unless immaculately cared for and they are BIG. That's because they are from the area where sound quality, not aesthetics, was paramount, and a speaker must be large to be efficient and have large, low-distortion drivers.