I don't want to steal anyone's thunder here but there's some things to consider here on top of Pete's questions.
1) Whenever recommending gear - unless they are willing to purchase blindly - it's best to stick with gear that is easily attainable for the seeker. So while it's all considered help, this type of mindful guidance will have more value when the recommended products are easily attainable, unless once again, they commit to blind purchases. So with that said the first question I would politely ask is, which brands can you audition in your area? There's also the used market like Pete mentioned and that's typically the best recommendation. If you're in a heavily populated area, sites like US Audio Mart and Audiogon can be a better way of accessing and auditioning a more diverse selection of loudspeakers. This way you can at least consider every single speaker recommended to you as well. It's safe to say even highly sought after speakers commonly net somewhere around 60% of MSRP on the used market. Give or take for variables like condition, brand recognition, location, and of course greed. But in the price range you're working in you should also typically be able to purchase brand new for 25% off, no "sale" required, just be a decent human being, pay in cash/debit and stand your ground. Regardless of what they may claim, trust me when I say that - as long as their shop is being run wisely - they are doing just fine selling at such a discount : ) So, the delta between new and used becomes narrower than most would guess. There's something said for a warranty but loudspeakers have much lower defect rates than components so that shouldn't be a concern.
2) Can we assume that your looking for standmount loudspeakers, not floorstanding? I mention this because although $2500 is a healthy budget, you'd be asking a lot of any floorstanding loudspeaker in that price range to be as coherent as Phantoms are - or any iem decent iem really. It's the biggest downfall of multiple driver/crossover loudspeakers and you pay a lot to achieve near seamless driver coherency. Absolute seamless multi-driver loudspeakers would push you well above your budget. There will be those that oppose this view but it all comes down to what your reference for coherency in loudspeaker design is exactly. There's the mid-bass hump
3) Though $2500 is no small sum, reproducing wide-bandwidth music with a focus on the 3 T's (tone, timbre and texture) above all else is on this budget is asking too much. $2500 puts you in standmount territory, not floorstanding which will have you sacrificing sub-bass for timbre and tone. On average standmount loudspeakers* won't produce objectively sufficient levels of sub-bass unless your room is on the smaller side (which means different things across the world) but say 100 sq ft. Maybe you can live with suppressed sub-bass like many standmount loudspeaker owners (without subs) easily do, but you also sacrifice a sense of realism as well as air in your music with a lack of sub-bass. It's counterintuitive but proper quantities of sub-bass help to provide a sense of air, not actually augmenting frequencies, it's a well documented pyschoacoustic phenomenon I only learned from my hilariously over-qualified co-worker with his PhD in the very field. Point here is even though Phantoms aren't a bassheads iem per se, as well that loudspeakers have more impactful bass response than iems on a whole, reproducing the same levels of satisfying Phantom sub-bass - which accounts in the sense of realism and air - with standmount loudspeakers without help from a dedicated sub per channel regardless of room size is an uphill battle not easily won. More controversy but one mono sub is blasphemy in 2ch, well unfortunately separate subs in general still are due to difficulty of seamless integration)
With all this said Harbeth P3ESR lol. Easy to find. Tone for days. Timbre kings. Lack sub-bass like 99% of standmounts but unlike this near universal truth they also roll off into the upper most frequencies, a compromise I'd be willing to take for their seductive tone. Clearly needs to be auditioned, though they are one of the most respected loudspeaker brands with a legendary history, at the end of the day it's all subjective and there are of course folks that look elsewhere but there's also the crowd can't fully appreciate their house sound as they're used to exaggerated detail...same can be said for Phantoms. To relate it to automobiles and drastically oversimplify it for my purposes, there's the spec driven crowd, and the comfort crowd. You can insert your own iems into the analogy. Then there's those that are seeking both. Quick and nimble plus comfortable, say a sporty luxury car for example. This is what I'd consider the Phantom's demographic - not literally but you get it - and considering your budget, plus a wide distribution never hurts, I can confidently say that P3ESR's should be at least considered as your AMG Merc...bad pick? I'm not really much of a car guy.
* There are exceptions to every rule with some large standmounts out there that have surprising amounts of sub-bass, usually coming down to enclosure size but with compromises in other areas to produce their bewildering sub-bass for a standmount. There's even 3-way standmount designs and probably some rare 2.5-way. Then complete anomalies like the the Kii Three. Btw none of which that I know of would I say they resemble the Phantoms 3 T's. Well save for Kii Three, but they're something all together different. It's the loudspeaker I'd purchase : )
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