I may be wrong here but years ago the Medalist's were made in the USA - now they're made overseas. So, the more expensive reels were probably older US made reels and the low-priced reels are more recent and imported.

I've never fished with a Medalist but I would like to get one of the older US made reels as I recently picked up a bamboo rod (albeit cheap) and it would be nice to have a nostalgic reel mounted to it. I currently have an old Martin reel (#15 or #35 I think) that I'm using but like the looks of the Medalist better.