I don't believe that to be true. I've never heard of these going for $3k. $5.5k in basic black and no options is the lowest I have ever seen them.
Actually, when we first began building the HT3's, we were building them in my back yard. I recall many days having to shovel snow to get to the saw and working outdoors in the cold all day. Glad those days are long gone. At any rate, not having any experience building this type of speaker, we introduced them at $3495 and built quite a few pairs at that "introductory" price. After a while, it occurred to us that we could not lose money on each pair sold and hope to make it up in volume. We had no choice but to increase prices.
We've made many change/improvements since then, and will continue to do so. But quite a few very early pairs were built for $3495, these pairs included.
Now you know the rest of the story.
- Jim