Technically this would qualify as an overspend since I paid a lot more than retail. It was Dec, 1990 and I had been looking for a pair of 3-way towers that I knew I could live with for at least the next decade and hopefully much longer for $2000 or less. A year and a half earlier I'd auditioned a pair of Magnat MSP-120's in a hometown hifi store and knew right away they were for me the speakers to beat...NO box colorations, extended at both ends, dynamic etc. and a real sweatheart of a match for a Luxman receiver at the same store - just gorgeous synergy. But, I decided to take some time and keep looking hi and low to see if I could come across anything that could beat them, figuring I could always come back to them. Never did find anything close - despite that they were only $1000 a pair - even at twice the price and after traveling to all the stores in 3 states. And that finally sold me. The only problem I didn't see coming at the time was that Magnats were made in West Germany - and in Jan. of 1990 the Berlin wall had only just come down and its subsequent bureaucratic nightmare was then ramping up. I went into my local hifi dealer and inquired about the 120's and was promptly informed that there would be no more new Magnat stock and only his demo units remained. Ok, no real problem. I wanted them. Then was told that the price had been marked up by $400. "Ok, I get it" I thought. "I know when I'm being conned". But the fact of the matter was that I knew deep down that if I'd had the extra money in my bank account at the time, I'd have bought them anyway. A) they were what I knew I wanted and B) I still didn't know of anything that could beat them for my purposes. In disgust I left the store determined to go out and shoot some pool with my buddies and literally drink the whole episode off my mind. Just wasn't in the cards after all, I guessed. After a few beers I bought a 5-dollar raffle ticket for a brand-new $500 cue stick in the bar I was in. To my shock, I won it - and promptly turned around and sold it that night for $400. I took the money back to the hifi store the next day and guardedly asked if the price of the speakers had gone up. I was told it hadn't. I took them home and have been thoroughly enjoying them ever since...despite that the manufacturer's warranty had been declared null and void by the factory. Out of self-defense really. It legally bound them to return all repaired items to their owners at Magnat's expense. But, when the wall came down, the systems all began to unravel and overseas shipping into and out of a not-yet-officially-re-unified Germany quickly became astronomical...well more than what most items were worth. A single screw by itself would have cost more than $50 to ship one way. A 160lb pair of speakers would have been way too much and no doubt the company might've gone bankrupt returning everybody's repaired items (they were a large company at the time). To this day they have remained withdrawn from the North American market...but, as it was, I got the next-to-last pair left in the country and, as a matter of fact, have had the last 23 years to be pretty thankful for it.
