Would you spend you money on modest brand new car or rather buy top notch vintage one?

New car.

@roxy54 ..."he dropped it to a 9. I think that the best that you can call an amp of that age is a 7. What do you guys think?"

Functional condition and age matters too, not just appearance for ranking. It also depends on whether it’s been updated or not with 34-40 year old caps, and other updates. A local gent partially guts the amp, replaces caps, all wiring, bits and more at a cost $. While the SA 1,2,3 "E" Series can be interesting, some of the same owners also upgraded to Pass X150+ amps later on. Worth reading up on with other Threshold-Pass owners. The desirability may be more of a personal thing, and for me, I’d want to consider the upgrade costs as part of the total investment or perceived value of paying extra for an E series amp. All part of your own personal scoring and ranking for consideration. 

@roxy54 Many vintage audio gears fetch more money if they are in the original condition. No, I don’t believe that the reason being is - collector of vintage. Personally, I don’t know even one collector unless he/she is an audiophile first and collector second. In addition, most of the updated used gears are not done right. The repair shop choice of replacement caps and wiring, in most cases degraded the original sound of the equipment. I rather buy for less ( or even more $$$) and do the upgrade myself. What is the point of buying something that works well but doesn’t sound as good as the original?  It's not that easy to get the right sound when changing caps, resistors, wire etc.

Try insuring vintage cars.

The cars are not the subject of discussion.  The title of the discussion was chosen  for different reasons. The subject here is not to compare cars vs. audio equipment, but rather buying new gears  vs. used.