Not my concept, but I have taken the idea.
Machines have a market price and a utility price, market price being what a machine is typically selling for these days, and utility price being what they are actually worth as far as what they can add to your shop. Market price has a lot more to do with want than need but $3k for the pair is actually a good deal at least as far as what these machines sell for. That price is well beyond their utility price.
You often see the reverse on large machines, little industrial use for manual machines these days and not many home users that can handle multi-ton machines, so their market value is often well under their utility value. Using John's comment as an example you occasionally find some nice 2-3 ton horizontal mills selling for about the same price as these 300lb Atlas mills. The number of people who can manage an Atlas mill is probably at least 100-1 more likely 1000-1 vs those who can handle even a moderate size #2 horizontal mill.
Want is a perfectly legitimate reason to buy something, I mean most of us hobbyists will never actually produce enough of physical value to remotely make our machines pay for themselves. We have them because we enjoy tinkering with them, and making the occasional item for 5x the time and cost of just buying it in the first place. Borrowing from modern terminology most of us have shops filled with emotional support machines.
This is at odds with the guys who actually have working shops that generate income.
Atlas was very much aimed at the home user / light industrial market and as a result they often get blasted for being cheap, and often compared to Chinese machines.
They did cut some corners on manufacturing to keep the costs down, but they also offered some nice to have features not often found on other brands selling similar size and cost machines. You really see this on their horizontal mill, and shaper. A bit lighter duty than similar size machines but often far more user friendly.
The Atlas shaper is easy to adjust, with all the control knobs right out there where it is easy for the user to adjust. Many of the other small shapers require the user to open the machine up and make internal adjustments using tools and guestimating the settings.
The Atlas mill has a relatively complex power feed that actually gives a good indication of the feed speed and adjusted with a dial more like what you would see on a much larger machine. Pretty much all of the other small horizontal mills just had a belt driven power feed, requiring belt changes to alter speed and only offering a couple of speeds (often just an arbitrary slow, medium and fast).
Just some examples of where they were marketing more towards home users and occasional light industrial users (prototyping, professional model makers etc) rather than the assembly line machine operators most of the other small machines were targeting. As a result the Atlas machines have acquired a bit of a following raising their prices higher than many comparable machines.
Deals are still out there, just need to be patient. If you have more money than patience, that isn't a terrible deal for the pair so long as you know they will never make their purchase price back except perhaps if you sell them. Enjoyment of your tools has a value as well.
