Reason for buying old/classic turntables

I replaced my Well-Tempered Reference Table with a Technics SP-10 MK II because the Technics is better. I wasn't being fashionable, cute or nostalgic.

As Mike suggested above, the Japanese DD tables of the late seventies and early eighties were statement products whose R&D was subsidized by the sale of millions of mass market tables. There is no such subsidy today and no investor could hope for a return on investment in sales of comparable products today.
The EPA 100 tonearm on that SL-1000 MK II table in the ad you guys are talking about, was Harry Pearson's reference arm for years and still competes favorably with much of what is for sale today. It is probably worth $1000 all by itself. It has 20 highly polished rubies in use as ball bearings and utilizes a very clever dynamic balance adjustment so that it can be used with any cartridge regardless of compliance.

The engineers who designed and built this stuff were every bit as capable as today's garage tinkerer's. They don't receive the same publicity, of course, because they are not being advertised in the review magazines and they cannot be stocked by high volume dealers.

The implicit superiority of modern product is mythology at its best.

Agree that $3000 for a Technics is just crazy, when you can get a good Thorens or Garrard for that. The build quality and sound of those tables is fantastic, better than anything I have heard so far being built nowadays.

FWIW, I find that the flagship direct-drive TTs of Japan in the late 1970s and early 1980s are really quite good. I have one which I enjoy quite a bit. However, they are from being the same. Some of them were relatively light, with very high-torque motors - like the Technics SP-10 Mk2 (and in particular, one other which I will not yet name because I am trying to find one!). Others were lower torque but higher inertia-moment players like the Yamaha PX-1, the Onkyo PX-100M, and a few others (note that when I call these low-torque players, they were not slouches - they all had torque 30-100% higher than the Technics SL-1200 series - but they had half the torque of the Technics SP-10Mk2). Having heard the SP-10Mk2 in the at-the-time very expensive original plinth vs some of the others, I prefer some of the others in stock form. That said, every table in a super-heavy plinth that I have ever heard outdid the same table in the cheaper plinth which came with it.

Chris Brady took his Teres belt-drive turntable designs to the pinnacle of the industry by word of mouth with very little review assistance. They were that good. But Chris found that he had reached a plateau with belt-drive and that he could only move forward significantly by developing a state of the art direct drive design. His Certus turntable is arguably the best modern turntable currently available. Still there are those who could buy it and choose vintage tables instead. I think the original poster wants to know why.

And I think I know what other vintage table T-bone is seeking.

I have seen a lot of these old decks. IMHO the Garrad 301 and 401 are over priced and over rated. Thorens TD 124 and Lenco heavy platters are the best performing idler wheels that you can easily get. My pick is the Lenco because they outperform the Garrads and the gorgeous Papst motor in the TD 124 is almost impossible to replace. Lencos are superb performers and cheap if you know how to service them. Just bin the stock tonearm. Spares can still be found. The Technics SP 10 MK II is a good deck [be wary of flogged out ex broadcast examples] but I would only pay around $500 for a good one. The Micro Seiki top end turntables are as good as it gets with superb high tech designs and excellent performance and no they don't make em like that anymore. I think the price you quoted is way too high.My pick of modern decks is Acoustic Signature. I think the argument over belt or idler or direct drive is academic. Broadcast decks have used mainly idler and direct drive with the top direct drives made by EMT, Denon and Technics, idlers do generally exhibit more rumble and turntable noise. Finally I think that you are on to it. Old decks have been hyped out of all proportion to their actual performance. The reason most turntable manufacturers go for belt drive is ease of manufacture and continual income streams from replacement belts. A real high quality direct drive is expensive to manufacture and there is no after sales service or upgrade market to exploit.