Bookshelf speakers- Buying a Bargain

Buying a bookshelf speaker has more variance in performance than any other audio item IMO. Over the last 30 years I bought sbout 20 bookshelf speskers. Most do not sound good at all. Mission, Klipsch, Pioneer, Wharfedalw were all poor performers. Only two bookshelf speakers I bought sounded good with great articulation and low distorting being Revel M22 and Audio Monitor Silver 3i. Revel M22 are too rare and too expensive. However the Audio Monitor Silver 3i and I suspect any Silver series are great speakers and the Silver 3i are about $300 on eBay. Per what I read the Bronze series are rather ordinary- avoid.

I always used rebuilt and upgraded Tube amps with best sounding tubes thus did not mask speaker performance.