Every number on this site is published with its basis attached, and the largest group of models in the archive has no price figure at all. That is not an oversight. Most vintage hi-fi does not sell often enough for a sold figure to mean anything, and an invented number is worse than an empty one.
What the archive actually holds
Of the 229 catalogue models, 49 carry a sold-listing reading, 53 carry an estimate, and 127 carry no basis and are shown as such. Each sold figure names the window it came from: the Classic Receivers tables for McIntosh, Marantz, Fisher and others come from 2012–2013 completed eBay listings; the Sherwood and Harman Kardon tables come from 2024 sales.
The one thing to understand about a sold aggregate
In this archive the three figures under a sold reading are not condition grades. They are the observed minimum, median and maximum of the sold prices in the sample. On a Marantz 2270 (68 completed listings) that is $175 / $379 / $1,425; on a Marantz 2245 (29 listings) $160 / $247 / $485; on a McIntosh MAC1700 (19 listings) $251 / $425 / $610. Read them as the spread of what sold, not as "poor / good / mint".
Where a sample is thin the card says so. The archive marks a reading as thin below ten observations: of the 49 sold readings, 21 are thin, the median sample is nine lots, and the smallest is three. A three-lot reading is indicative only, and the page labels it that way.
Asking is not sold
Dealer asking prices run above actual sold prices, sometimes by a wide margin, and they sit in the market indefinitely without selling. The archive labels which of the two a figure is, and never presents an asking price as a sold one. If you are told a unit is "worth" a dealer's ticket price, you are being given an asking price.
What actually moves a price
Condition and originality move a figure more than any list does. The parts that matter are the ones a restoration cannot convincingly reproduce — output transformers and chokes, a platter, an original case — plus a documented restoration standard, matched valve sets, and the completeness of cages, crib sheets and manuals. A version marker matters too: on models with more than one version, the versions sell in different brackets.
What this archive will not do
It will not appraise a unit from photographs, and it will not turn a single sale into a valuation. Read the framework on the values page, then read the model you own: the year decides the class, and the class decides the bracket. The model catalogue lists every model with its years and the basis of any figure attached to it.