Because so few customers would be prepared to pay the cost, imagine the inflation adjusted prices of that old kit, would you pay that now?
If I was buying my first serious system or components, absolutely 100%, yes. And with the benefit of hindsight, I made the right decision to do so back then.
Back in the day (late 80s), after messing around with 2nd hand and low-med range gear, I ordered and bought a Sony CDP-338esD CD player, based on hands on, loving the build quality and componentry and having some absolutely stellar reviews. It was the 2nd top model. The CDP-X7esD was AUD$2799 at the time whereas the 338esD was $1399. That was a ton of money in 1989/90.
Then I ordered from Sony Australia a pair of rare SSG-333es speakers (home market), obtained matching stands ($700 on their own), then the cassette deck, tuner, preamplifier, power amplifier, DAT recorder etc etc. It took many years to amass all the pieces and some had to come via secondary channels (2nd hand from an ex-Sony state manager- I had a large timber crate made in our factory in Sydney, shipped it 1400km to SA and another 2000km back to me with a mint TAN77es, TAE77es and another (I had one already) CDP-X7esd in it). That cost me several K for the gear and a carton of beer to the freight company- they put the crate on a pallet, shrink wrapped it all and placed it high up on pallets of our flat pack furniture- a forklift put it in the back of my car at the freight depot as the crate and the gear was around 100Kg.
Thing is, I still have all that Sony ES gear. It's still the finest
entire range of gear ever produced by one company in my opinion. I have tons of Yamaha, Pioneer, Accuphase, Akai, Sansui, JVC, Onkyo, every brand under the sun, but none went all-out to build the best of everything the way Sony did. Thing is, although it was expensive, it wasn't ludicrously so.
Much of the gear these days is ludicrously overpriced, of dubious quality and these tinpot brands have one or two hero products and nothing else.
Frankly, it's boring.