I dig the old iron and regularly use several vintage tools. It's a real joy using tools that were owned and used by previous generations.
That being said. I would love to have some of the newer planes. (They are technically superior to many vintage planes)
Reasons:
New high end planes (Lie-Nielsen and Veritas also Bridge City and some others (NOT NEW STANLEY) are manufactured from the get go to much higher tolerances and quality standards than any of the vintage planes. (These guys know their niche market and have the technology and tooling available to make a superior product).
Stanley tool works is and always has been a mass manufacturing enterprise tool maker. Every penny spent in mfg increases their cost, affects profitability, and is tracked ruthlessly. This is in fact why we have cast iron planes with thin uniform thickness cutting irons with a cap iron in the first place. Leonard Bailey designed his planes to be mass manufactured at a lower cost to goods sold than wooden bodied planes period. He was solving a manufacturing problem not a wood working problem. While Leonard Bailey did re-invent the modern hand plane and did a fine job of it as well, ask most hand tool craftsman and they will tell you that a properly constructed and tuned wood body plane with a thick tapered iron is superior to cast iron in most regards.
New high end planes are ductile iron (or bronze) vs gray iron. this means they are less brittle and more forgiving when they hit the floor (as mine have been known to
). This also imparts a tiny bit of spring so they retain their factory shape and flatness longer than a vintage plane.
The blades are a bit thicker and high quality steel, the mouth openings are cast and machined for those thicker irons. Once you file a mouth opening on a vintage plane there is no going back. Filing a mouth opening by hand is never as accurate as precision machining at a factory.
The Veritas planes have interesting features and are more innovative. I kinda like the idea of set screws to retain the lateral adjustment. I often bump that damn lever and send the lateral adjustment off.
Depth adjusters have much less backlash than vintage adjusters.
But I have more time than money so finding and tuning the vintage stuff works for me and has become part of my hobby as well.
For some planes a new one is actually less expensive than vintage.
Plough planes
Low angle jack and smoothing planes. Try pricing a vintage Stanley 62 or 64 and compare to the modern equivalent. Vintage is almost double.
There are no low angle jointers in vintage stock. (They just didn't make them)
High angle planes are very rare and pricey on the vintage market. high angle frogs are readily available from lie-nielsen (Very useful for planing highly figured and difficult to plane woods The alternative is to alter the grind on your iron)
Many of the block planes especially skewed iron block planes. Stanley 140 planes (and equivalent) regularly go for more than $100 in poor condition.
Whether new or vintage I'm personally happy to see a revitalization of hand tools and it's good to know that high quality hand tools are still being made.