Ok, just summing up what I've learned so far about this topic, there are a few different axes to navigate.
Sensitivity — while it's clear that there are speakers around 89-90 db and 100 db, what range between those, say, 93-96db (and considering ohms, and graphs about all this as well) is out there. Many options have been raised on this thread.
Re-sale — I'm really learning how many very good speaker companies there are out there that one would never hear of without a forum. That's a great thing to learn, but if this is not an endgame speaker, how hard or at what cost would re-sale be? A Devore would sell easily; Coherent audio or NSMT? Might take a hit. (Then again, one might not pay as much up front...)
Design types — ribbon, concentric, active woofer, open baffle, MTM, etc. Again, a variety of styles to navigate here, all to be cross- referenced with top two factors.
And, yes, of course anything above has to be heard, tried in one's room with one's gear, music, etc. But the reason I single out the above axes of factors is that one needs to figure out which to spend the time trying.
Given the above, did I miss any major axis?