You will have to raise your budget if you are looking for LLL.com's
As far as threads like this ruining value, get real. A domain to the end user is NOT going to have its value ruined by threads like these. The only people who would get affected are those flipping to other domainers. However most of us are not interested in flipping to domainers so threads like this do not harm us. Also LLL's have been going for under $4K for a bit now, look at Snap for instance.
However the better the letters you have, the more chances at potential end users so those still remain higher in cost.