Mine's a mid-2010 MBP, only paid $1600 new (later upgraded the memory and swapped to an SSD). It's still my main system eight years later. Unfortunately, I can't install newer versions of the OS. I'm stuck at no higher than 10.12(?), so now there's mainstream software I can't install because of OS version requirements.

Kind of a bummer since it's still a good machine. 8+ years is a pretty good run, but that doesn't mean I'm ready to replace it. I guess my point is, yeah, even if initially expensive, it's been a good value. I hope the new ones are similar...