Audiophiles hifi appreciation thread old and new

I've been looking at Celestion Dittons and Wharfedales from late 70s. I don't know what I'm doing. Is this all a complete gamble and should I just buy new retro looking stuff?

I’m going to say yes but no. You’re looking at 50+ year old speakers with foam surrounds. The speakers were good and had that proper correctly-aligned sound. The problem with them is early polymers and adhesives in general didn’t last that long and there’s a pretty good chance the surrounds or the adhesive will have perished [though note that you can get replacement surrounds for a lot of well-respected speakers].

By well into the 90s, in fact, I’m going to say into the early 00s, speaker technology had not changed much and a good-quality big paper driver in a well-aligned box still had that sound. Don’t limit yourself to 70s stuff. There are plenty of late 80s and 90s speakers which will sound exactly the same but the constituent materials are 10-20 years younger and thus won’t need any attention.