Here's an excellent review of early SSB transceivers. I never owned any of these. but I sure loved the looks of the Collins rigs, which were nearly as expensive as a new car when I was a kid. I now have the Drake twins, fairly recently acquired and not yet put in service, as I got them just before we moved across the country. I believe they are more recent than the Drakes shown in this video and have a reputation for excellence.  

Here's a nice website with lots of classic rigs to explore. I need to get one of my ham radio domain names into service for blogging!