Why Crazy Prices paid for Pioneer 100 JBL L100 AR1 AR3 AR3A

VINNY55 +1...The ARs sounded lifeless.....(To my ears.)

Good question. I have an old pair of JBL L80(?) boxed up somewhere that I listened to for about a week, then boxed them back up. I bought them thinking they would be great, only to realize they were (to me at the time) just average, in fact had a cheap speaker sound. Though in fairness I may have just hooked them up to a receiver, and thought 'meh'. Klipsch Heresys fit that 'not high end' category for me too -although they can be made to sound okay with tube gear. I’m sure our listening preferences change over time. Back when I was a teenager, a friend had some JBL 4311s that sounded really good when cranked up (especially remember that midrange clarity). My first set of speakers (1979) were Infinity RS10bs, selected (barely) over some Polk 10Bs. Both of which sounded much better to me than the lower scale JBLs of the day.

Kinda like asking why Mcintosh cost so much and go up in price, not down.  It's a cult thing almost.. I liked JBL L100s.  The comps at the time were Bose 901, Infinity, had a few cool ones to choose from. AR (not much info on them) But very popular. The point is a lot of those speakers bring a good price. It's what the market will bear, and inventory at the time.

I'm surprised at how prices are going up on most speakers. 

The one exception is Polk. It seems they were flat on the resale. Good speakers. They were a wall of drivers, BIG. I liked a lot of their reference speakers, with the special IC..SDA, RTA. 

But JBL... The Everest series, holy cow....Serious sound. You know the L100 were a great little monitor, nice looking, lot of upgrades too, XOs.
What were you driving them with, and did they need repairs, they are old.

Regards

The AR's were the best speaker I had ever heard in '68. Of course that was before I went to any CES shows.
Probably sound like a Polk now.
Collecter items is the ONLY explanation.