I can try to answer these in my experiences. Teslas are very, very good sounding cymbals. My tastes have evolved since then but they are fairly bright and pretty trashy, you could get a nice dark one made for a very good price. My 17" medium thin has a very nice ride sound and is much easier to open up at low volumes than my AAXplosion that I had. Currently I have it paired with an 18" HHX Evolution which is a much cleaner sound but still a bit darker than the Tesla.
I also had a bunch of Glory cymbals, of which all that I still have is the splash which is a lovely dark sound (yet still has a nice bright attack) that opens up MUCH better at low volume than any splash I've ever tried. I had a Glory 17" medium thin crash, 19" vented china, and 21" raw bell dry ride, which were all a bit heavy and cleanly dark for me (though you might like that). One thing to know is that I don't think they can do real raw bells, because I asked for one on the ride and all they did was finish the bell darkly, it still was lathed. I had the Glory ride refinished on the bottom with a Decadence finish which is probably more my style. I have a friend who has a 19" Nemesis crash/ride but I haven't heard it yet so I can't tell you about it.
As far as I remember, my first trade was a Zildjian 16" A Custom crash for the Tesla and I had to pay something for it, probably under $50. If you have high-end cymbals in good condition, you can get good value (I actually was able to do straight trade with my 19" AAXtreme china for that 19" Glory china, but I don't think he does that often). My friend with the Nemesis traded in some of his Rogers brass cymbals (crashride, hats) and IIRC got something like $60-80 total.
Hope this helped.
Saluda has some really nice finishes. And, of course, they sound amazing.