It doesn't matter. It's perception. DP lost all the value of his earlier high dollar cues because of what he chose to do. If you flood the market with tons of a product, the value goes down. When he did it, realizing that he could make more money by making and selling a higher volume at a lower price, he drove the prices down to where he could no longer get the 3-400 bucks per cue that made his business model functional. So in order to make up for it, he had to make more cues. That's when the quality dipped way beyond acceptibility. I had and played for several years with one of his cues right after he changed his model. It was a great cue. Within a year of that, there were massive deficiencies and it just drove down the value of all of his cues.
Any product is worth what people are willing to pay for them. Unfortunately, DP did screw over all of the previous customers and the older cues value dipped with the rest of them. You don't have to go by what I say. Feel free to pay a grand or more for one of his cues. I remember seeing a couple of his cues in the mid nineties at spa and billiard stores for $2200.00 and thinking I'd like to get one of those. I got one and was lucky to get close to what I paid for it just before everything hit the fan.
Jaden