Which Nakamichi to choose?

Comment noted. Fortunately you’re in the small minority.

"Gilding a turd"; I never thought about it like that, but it seems most appropriate.

The high cost of high quality tapes is sufficient reason to abandon this technology. Chalk it up to economics. 

I stopped using cassettes 20 years ago. But "turd"? I had the Nak 505 — and tapes, whether from CD or Vinyl or R2R, were indistinguishable from the original. Not only could I not tell which was which, nobody could, including musicians and sound engineers. They didn't even try, they knew they'd only guessing. I still have the 505 and never use it; what a waste, somebody out there would be on Cloud 9 if he had it...

If you ask me, ordinary 30 year cassettes played on a portable cassette player sound superior to many if not most CDs based strictly on musicality.  They’ve got danceability! 
And not only that but digitally remastered cassettes are definitely superior to their CD counterparts.