If I could afford, I’d purchase 100% Oswald Mills Audio gear

The more I read the more I like. The prototypes platter looks nicer to me with the greenish lights rather than what appears to be  orange dots on the finished plinth.  The caged style Tone arm almost has to be built like that to favor the plinth! How else could it be built to match the plinth? What a work of engineering how the direct drive is built.  I'm on your side chalkster  

He has some really interesting stuff, and his decision that he would rather sell one thing at $100K rather than ten things at $10K seems to be pretty common these days.  I'm interested in the Fleetwood DeVille's, but I have to admit that his decision to take the price from $9,600 to $12,600 almost immediately after getting CBS Sunday Morning to come out and do a story on him gave me pause.  The product is about two or three years old and get's a 30% jump after some national publicity.   

Queue some dope to come in and cite the cost of lumber.  If you just look at his options and the price jumps (like $6K from the basic DeVille's to ones wrapped in less leather than would go on a very small ottoman) it's very clear that he's not interested in selling to audiophiles, but rather folks who want unique and will pay for it.   Good for him if he can make it work.

With ultra high end Audio, 👁 candy. Is part of the purchase .
personally I care more about what’s under the hood as far as parts 
quality . For Turntables I find these with counter rotating platters 
for lowest noise very cool 😎 under I see the $$ price tags .
nice build quality without the fare fare far more cost effective .

A general rhetorical query:

Why do so many here and elsewhere assume that those with six or seven figures to spend on audio gear are deaf, non-audio lovers....unable to discern good sound from bad?  The inference seems to be that only idiots who were somehow lucky enough to find a satchel of cash by the side of the road are stupid enough to stagger into Oswald's studio and hand them the satchel for something....anything.

Like alot of things in life, some things are worth it to some people. I've heard the Oswald gear briefly. It's very good.

People used to say the same thing about Air Tight, Audio Note, Kondo, Shindo, Lamm, DCS, MSB etc, etc. There aren't enough stupid and deaf people out there to keep these companies going so there is likely some innovation and superb craftsmanship taking place. Today is the golden age of our hobby, so much great gear being made today.

I think the Golden age of our hobby has long past from when it was more inclusive, and more populated people wise with music lovers first and foremost. It's very hard to argue with the scarcity of true quality pressings to buy/afford, yet here we are with turntables at 360, 000 US.
That's only Golden for the few since we are talking anologue.
We had great stuff back then and expensive stuff too. Just less of the uber stupid stuff.
Like it or not this current golden age by a huge vast majority now is a cell phone and good ear buds... 

We had our buds too...
We cleaned them using gatefold album covers...😊