Is it possible for a high end manufacturer to overprice their goods?

"these people are not millionaires in any sense"

Uh, assuming their houses are mostly paid off, actually they are millionaires, based on the commonly used definition:

a person whose assets are worth one million dollars or more

More interesting information:

As of Apr 12, 2023, the average annual pay for the Millionaire jobs category in the United States is $76,071 a year, or approximately $36.57 an hour.

and,

The nearly 22 million Americans with a net worth of over $1,000,000, account for 8.8% of the country’s adult population and over 39% of millionaires worldwide. Feb 24, 2023

Of course, as you observed, being a millionaire based on assets is different from having a million dollars.

@daveyf - I don't know how you can judge price/value without listening to the thing. That price point is not even close to the top these days --not justifying high prices but my limited experience with Rockport gear- both table and speakers- was top notch. Look at the competition- Wilson, Magico, YG, all the other big inert boxed dynamics, let alone some of the more esoteric systems from MBL, various new horn manufacturers.

If the question is why anyone would spend X on a piece of gear, I think that's all relative, not only to the person's wealth, but their degree of passion/insanity whatever you want to call it. A lot of the uber high end stuff owned by some of the folks here is well past that mark and while they may have money, they aren't super rich. The folks I've known that fit into the crazy money crowd for the most part aren't hi-fi nuts. They may have a good system, but nothing over the top. And often, have lots of other passions, collecting art, cars, whatever. 

I just don't see an argument here- if you told me you heard it and it sucked for 130k dollars, that would be a different story. 

remember too, we are looking at worldwide sales, and Rockport has a significant presence in Asia and elsewhere..,.probably most won't be sold in USA...and again, we are discussing their second most expensive speaker, and many companies make much more expensive ones...so Yeah, how do they sound...seems no one commenting has ever actually heard one.

..

@mitch2 that's why some (more practical) definitions exclude the primary residence because you have to live somewhere. Audio-spending-wise, your salary and liquid assets will matter infinitely more than what your house is worth.

@grislybutter Good point - "millionaires" may not be a good measure of the disposable wealth in our society.

I was trying to make a point about the market for ultra high end luxury goods being very deep and I would make the same point by saying that there seems to be a race in the high end audio industry to introduce extremely expensive products. All of the evidence I see indicates that there is no limit to what people will pay for ultra expensive stereo gear.

Is seems that every month a company introduces a new six-figure audio component. There must be a selection of at least 50 speaker models that cost over $100k and dozens of other components that cost over $50k. The anecdotal evidence is that wealthy audiophiles wait in line to buy this stuff. In an interview with Dan D'Agostino he said that he is selling his Relentless $250,000 amplifiers as fast as he can make them. There are other similar anecdotes from manufacturers including Wilson regarding their top end speakers. They sell out their entire production run shortly after the model is announced.

The other piece of evidence is the number of new high end audio stores that have opened in the last decade. They seem to be thriving. To go along with this, the two surviving audio publications seem to be very healthy with each issue getting thicker with more advertising.

So I guess my answer to the original question is to say that boutique audio companies haven't found the upper limit to how much money some people will pay for audio gear. I don't know how many people have $1 million+ in disposable income but there sure seems to be a lot of them.