Art Dudley Calls B.S. but without naming names - PLEASE DO!

About 25 years ago I rode a motorcycle.  Back then I couldn't understand why anyone would buy a Harley Davidson, as they were beautifully made, but had excessive vibration, poor brakes, were not very reliable, etc. etc.  And back then, if you attempted to purchase a new Harley at a dealer, they would load up the bikes with accessories and one of my local dealers required that you purchase an extended warranty as well.  It just baffled me that they could "get away" with that behavior, but they did.

So, what determines the "value" of an item in our marketplace?  I'd say it's what people are willing to pay for it.

The best way to go about this might be to just list the names you think are a good value with price points and NOT mention the ones you think are not a less than stellar value.

I agree you can't really list the ones you may think are grossly overrated, or hugely overpriced, so just do the opposite. :)

ejr1953

... what determines the "value" of an item in our marketplace? I'd say it's what people are willing to pay for it.

Agreed. Value, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

It all boils down to the delta in the competing concepts of "form follows function" vs. "style and flair in a luxury good has a price of its own". Take a stroll down 5th Ave in NYC or Rodea Dr. in Beverly Hills and you see the purest examples of the latter-Gucci, Tiffany, Patek, et al. Not everyone cares to wear Dockers and a Timex watch and use handbags made of canvas. At times, I came very close to buying a pair of Quicksilver monoblocks and the now discontinued Quicksilver Full Function preamp but the barebones cosmetics were just too much for me to overcome. I don't like seeing prominent capacitors jutting out of a chassis with what looks like a chrome hose clamp holding down the cap in plain view. Does it fulfill it's function without compromise? Yes. Should it bother me? No. But something between strictly utilitarian and pure bling is a valid consumer choice. Thanks to the new parent company of ARC with hefty Italian ownership, ARC recently offered two functionally identical amps, one full of bling and one almost devoid of it with the GS150 and the Ref 150SE. The Galileo Series version in unquestionably beautiful but the tariff for the bling was ~$4000 from $15,000 to $19,000 IIRC. The marketplace voted and the GS150 was discontinued. What if ARC had not offered the Ref 150SE and the only option to get the amp would have been the bling version? We will never know. 
Art eschews complication for the sake of complication and values simplicity and durability. Those are noble ideals. But things are not that simple. He loves the aesthetics of Shindo gear and he is not alone. If it were identical functionally but ugly (let's imagine for a minute that it were pink and shaped like a frisbee), he would not own it. 

Art "methodology" is flawed in that Audio Shows don't really reflect the overall state of the market and exhibitors are more likely to show higher priced gear to lure in listeners. That being said value is very much a relative thing to each their own.