I am an ardent fan of Meridian and still believe the sound quality of their 15 year old technology is stunning. At the same time I am disappointed that the company's innovation fervor has been in decline for years.With that being said, I believe there are a few primary reasons for the dramatic drop in resale for Meridian equipment.

1. It is a luxury brand with luxury margins. Original owners often have to overpay for Luxury items and those same items often plummet in value over time. Think about a BMW 7 series. To buy one new you would spend nearly 90k but you can find it used for 6k (2003 model). That is 6% of the original cost. Think about an 861v4. New it was 20k in 2003 and now resales for 1500-2k. At least you are getting 7.5% of the original value.

2. Meridian has not kept up with on the technology trends in the industry (home theater at least). While way ahead of the curve in it's hay-day. For example, the surround processor line's inability to decode DolbyTRUE HD is insane. The "next gen" format was released in 2006 and is based on MLP which was developed by Meridian for DVDAudio. I realize the HD621 can process PCM audio at equal resolutions but this workaround is becoming increasing cumbersome with the improvement of streaming content audio and formats. For example, you have to resort to Dolby Digital output on an Amazon Firestick because the DolbyPlus format is not supported and the device does not decode streams to PCM. These are formats that have had wide spread adoption for nearly 15 years. Don't even get me started on spacial surround formats like Atmos.

3. Digital products are the worst to invest in, thanks Moores Law. Because digital technology is always improving by leaps and bounds what once was available to only the most committed audiophiles can now be bought for pennies on the dollar. Every year there is a new innovation, new resolution, and another "veil" lifted from digital playback. Meridian has been the digital leader for decades but now the others are catching up, if not surpassing them.

4. Proprietary technology. Both a blessing and a curse. For system cohesion this can be a win. A fully digital system is amazing but a lot of specialized parts and pieces that don't play well with others can complicate the resale of an item outside of it's own ecosystem. The fact that I can't stream from my phone or other device directly to a pair of DSP speakers without a bunch of other equipment is counterintuitive in 2020.

Not meant to be argumentative , just my 2ยข

Nick