Mike,
First off I think that taking a pass was a good move.
Perhaps more than most others, I have experience with "old" speakers: acquiring and refurbishing.
For me there's a triad of things that I consider when buying:
1. How do the drivers look? Is there any physical damage? If there is, can replacements be had? If I can't be guaranteed that all of the drivers will, in the end, be fully functional and sound like new, then I would pass. (Others might like to create Frankenspeakers by ripping out the bad drivers and literally throwing in something that fits (perhaps not even well) the driver opening. Not me!)
2. Are the cabinets in really good shape or do they look like they've seen an unfair share of abuse? Unless you're a master at furniture restoration I'd pass on anything that can't, with but a good polish, look good in bright light in your living room. I've had one cabinet start to "buzz" on me; luckily it was just an old internal glue joint that was easily fixed.
3. Notice that I've not yet said "how do they sound." Obviously if you hook them up and they sound just great (especially if you know what "just great" is supposed to sound like for those speakers) then you should feel pretty confident about them BUT I've heard such speakers even though the Xovers were in serious need of refurbishing / were just barely hanging in there. Resistors corrode. Caps drift out of tolerance. But before failure (ie. no sound from a driver) things might still sound good. If possible access the Xover and physically inspect it. Look for corrosion. The drivers and Xover work together. You might think a driver has failed when it's perfectly good - which is why I rely first on a physical inspection of the drivers.
Once you've gone through the exercise then you need to decide two things: if these speakers are already in great shape and sound great, are they worth the asking price; and if they need work (and I'm confident that I know what work needs doing) will they be worth the purchase price plus the cost of refurbishing?
Seriously damaged speakers like you described are "junkers" in my book. My offer is to take them off someone's hands (ie. pay nothing) or pay the cost of shipping the salvageable parts to me (if they're not local).
Refurbishing at a pro shop is not cheap. I typically pay between $400 and $800 per pair, depending on the model. I used to think that my local shop (SpeakerMart) was charging me too much - but I was willing to pay given how much I liked their work / the end result. I've since been able to see copies of invoices from two other shops in North America, for the same refurb job on the same pair of speakers, and I now know that SpeakerMart is charging the same as the others are. It's labour intensive. If you're good at that sort of thing you can save a bundle if you do it yourself. Other than replacement drivers (assuming new ones are available), the parts are relatively cheap.
I posted this even though you'd already made up your mind - to share my thoughts with others who might read this thread.
Jeff
ps. Just a quick note to those who will tackle a Xover refurb. Based on how many times I've needed to tell people this who've contacted me, a lot of people forget that, if you can't find a resistor with an exact matching value, you can use two resistors in either series or parallel to arrive at the required value. For simplicity purposes you can add any two values in series to get a higher value that you need; and if you need a value that's exactly half of what's available you can put two of the same in parallel to get half their value. Match the tolerances as closely as possible. Never use a lower power rating, but higher is ok.
