Dream vs. Reality - What have you bought?

Remember that 2C3D System on the cover of Stereophile? It was Avalon Eidolons, Spectral monos/preamp and MIT cables designed specifically to match them. I fell in love after demoing them at Overture. Over a couple of 1-2 hour demos, I was totally in awe, but too costly for me. So over a year+, Terry at Overture collected trade-in pieces for me...the Avalon Radian HC, the stereo version of the Spectral amp and 2nd Spectral preamp, MIT/Spectral cables. After so long a wait they delivered and setup the system in my home. It took less than a month for me to load it all in a van, drive 3 hours to Audio Connection and dump in all in favor of old Quad 63USAs and a bunch of tube gear that together satisfied me for years. 
Be careful what you ask for! Cheers,
Spencer

Dream: Some years ago, I heard Grand Ventures (ancestors of the current Grand Ultimate Mk III?)  at RMAF.  Not sure 100k+ for any speakers is a good use of resources, but I thought they were absolutely stunning, and conspicuously better than many flagship speakers I've heard.
Reality: Listening to speakers at a (nominally) more reasonable 10k (give or take), I've been struck that while many are very nice, few stand out from the pack as clearly superior choices.

Nice dreaming about FAL Supreme speakers driven by Kondo amps. But a dream. So i started with Kondo KSL interconnects, long way to go.
But i enjoy much what i have for now.

G

I guess it all depends on what you are listening to: a high power amp with low efficiency, multiple driver speakers will do a good job on wall-of-sound rock but be challenged on piano solo or string quartetts. Conversely even horns on SETs will not produce the sound pressure needed on the former. So basically you start with sound pressure vs.resolution. I‘ll be contentious in saying that the power amp defines the rest of the chain. I started with Accuphase pre and power and IMF transmission lines, moved to Chord amps and B&W 801s to move to Graaf otls and Duevel Omnis. from there I moved to a Wavac power amp and now have the Duevels for 20 years. Obviously the front ends have changed quite a bit as well, fundamentally though the changes were always derivative to the Amp and speaker combination.