Need advice

If you can forego nostalgia Yogiboy’s recommendation makes a lot of sense.

Back to nostalgia, you might consider one of these three brands to keep within your targeted budget: Teac, Akai (with glass heads) & Pioneer. If gone through properly they will offer very good playback performance and reliability.

Revox, Tandberg and Nakamichi are great decks, but if/when they go down you can almost assuredly expect a repair bill larger than your targeted initial expenditure of $200.00. And yes, I can speak from experience in terms of owning at least one deck from each of the aforementioned brands over the years.

I have purchased two Teac decks from this eBay seller (theoldstereoguy) in recent years and they’ve arrived well-packed and in the stated physical/operational condition. Zero affiliation, just a reliable place to start. Good luck.

I bought a Nakamichi DR-3 in mint condition a couple of years ago here on A'gon for a hundred bucks. Works and sounds like a charm. I would avoid Tandberg. Great decks, but problematic ... and I speak from experience on this issue. They have solenoid switches that will have you pulling your hair out. 

Frank 

Nakamichi only. Frankly I think you are out of your mind. The only reason I ever had a Cassette deck was to record tapes for the car otherwise other program sources sound much better either vinyl or digital. By Music!

Based on your budget, you probably can't go wrong with that $149 Marantz mentioned above. Spend the leftover $50 on cassettes from a local thrift store or used record store. Check to be sure the used cassettes still have the felt pressure pad, otherwise they won't play.

I use my Nakamichi deck to record some of my favorite LPs and play them in the car. The car stereo is a Mark Levinson sound system. All analog while cruising down the highway. 

Thrift stores are a great place for used cassettes. Be sure to buy only the premium tapes like those from Maxell and TDK. Use a pen or pencil to make sure the mechanisms work freely. Then get a bulk tape eraser from Radio Shack to erase the old information from the used tapes. It's kind of fun to play the tapes before you erase them though, just to see what the previous owner put on them. Pretty amazing how bad some of them are. Used tapes at the thrift stores usually go from between a quarter and fifty cents. 

Frank