WOW...I looked at an 87 model LC-20 Okuma a couple years ago that was a one owner machine with a bit less than 2000 hours on it. I thought it was nice, but it wouldn't match this lathe at all. It was a 4 axis machine and the owner was asking $23,500 for it. He eventually sold it for $17,000.
IMO, the issue of brushes is overblown to a large degree. One of my LC-20's is an 84 model with Yaskawa brush DC servos and spindle motor. It was run enough on a 2 shift operation prior to me buying it that it had 4 new ballscrews (4 axis machine), yet the original full set of spare brushes are all in their original plastic bag in the control enclosure. I checked all the brushes prior to running it, under the assumption that I'd replace them if anything looked remotely questionable since the new onew were there anyway, but all of them showed at least 50% remaining life, so I left them alone.
I look at lathes in a different light than machining centers. Top spindle speed on a brand new one is about the same as top speed on one of equivalent size from 20+ years ago. The only place where a new one is faster is on rapids and turret indexing. Because tool change positions can be set to take place barely clear of the part, rapids have less influence on overall speed of a lathe as compared to a machining center. For operations like threading where there are a lot of repetitive moves, the return move is short, so acceleration factors make the total return time difference less than the difference in rapids would indicate.
A new lathe of the size and quality of that Ikegai would likely push $80K. Assume the new machine would rapid and index tools in half the time of the old one. If a person was to pay $7500 for the Ikegai and run parts on it where the total rapid and toolchange time amounted to one minute per part, you'd have to run 145,000 parts on the new machine at a dollar a minute before the time savings based on rapids and turret indexing would reach the break even point. If you drop down a notch or two in price and rigidity on the new machine, and lose the slightest bit in cutting capability in the process, you may never reach the break even point before both machines are worn out.
I know of an early 80's Matsuura VMC that's every bit as nice as the Ikegai up above. Because of spindle speed, rapids, lack of full enclosure, and toolchange times, its a $2500-$3500 machine tops, but the owner thinks its worth $7500. If the overall performance on machining centers from then to now was as close together as it is on lathes, the Matsuura would be worth $7500 in a heartbeat, but that just ain't the case.
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