I bought a 3DS XL sometimes last year. It was under $200.
After seeing the surge in demand, I feel lucky that I bought it when I did. I also decided to take it out and play some animal crossing new leaf for the first time and I’m really enjoying it.
I sometimes wonder if I should have bought the “new” variant back then, but they were much more expensive and I’m still not sure if the performance improvements would have been worth it.
I’m basically just using not for ds and 3ds games, so, I’m guessing the power difference would not really matter.
Without 3D its not worth having a physical console when everything else can be emulated extremely reliably everywhere else and 3DS games are getting better emulated day by day. Its like if you bought a SNES but played it on a shity LCD TV.
The (New) 3DS XL has quite nice haptics, and emulating the dual-screen setup is a little awkward especially handheld.
Apart from that I agree with you.
It was worth getting a second-hand New 3DS XL for €100 a few years ago, but the prices people talk about here are just not worth it.
Same holds true for old Gameboys and similar tech.
Same experience here, there have been a couple of interesting devices to run double screen games (AYN Thor), but it’s rather expensive for having a dedicated device for just the DS and 3DS catalogues (with some hardware gaps).
The cheapest way for a quality emulation experience is probably a phone with a portrait-mode game controller attachment.