Ah! Then definitely treat yourself to an electric. I’m upgrading to a lagom casa soon ($600), and that might be worth looking into for your aesthetic.
Honestly any of the millenium lever la pavonis would be fine/similar. Spring lever (Stradivari) would probably exceed that budget.
You need to budget for the grinder too. That would be more important. Assuming a hand grinder similar to the KINGrinder k6 ($100$), that leaves enough for a second hand la pavoni. It’s tiny and as retro as they come. That said, it is jumping off into the deep deep end of espresso with a steep learning curve.
It won’t be very reproducible to start with (shots will vary from sour to bitter). But if a super auto will suit you, you should be able fine with the less than stellar shots while you learn.
La Pavoni Europiccola. Currently it's in storage and broken due to a rust issue ( I have to replace the boiler at some point) , but it was a fun machine to learn on, the lever action really informed my understanding of pressure. Now my current machine has a PID and is much less susceptible to wild temperature swings, and as a result is more consistent at making better coffee.
Not all of those things are true for all lever machines, only for the ones with no boiler... I got our first-born a La Pavoni Europiccola when they moved out and they are very happy with it.
A certain amount of practice on my Elektra was of course a pre-cursor to that.
When I got mine, the foot was brown but started rusting around the boiler, so I replaced the whole foot and upgraded the electrics at the same time. Nice thing is that the electrics are very easy to get parts for and replace yourself, even if you're not an engineer.
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Fast heat-up, easy for beginners; inconsistent shots, annoying cleaning.
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