is the Apthorp worth buying in?

If you love the building, and can afford to get burned (renovation delays, assessments, higher CCs, etc.), it might be worth the gamble. My personal view is that there are enough beautiful, iconic buildings on the Upper West Side so that rolling the dice on the Apthorp isn't really necessary. But I guess there's a a price where it makes sense, especially if you have a strong preference (or requirement) for a condo.

How does an apartment listed for $2mm sell for $200k? How does someone think to offer that...

First of all, the "penthouses" being written about are monstrosities, small, dark and DIRECTLY beneath huge turbines just put on the roof. These prices are being offered to shills for Leviev only, in order to hold them until all occupants on the roof are gone so that the roof can be developed into a health club or some other fanciful idea. No one is going to actually live in them! No one could. This is more ridiculous hype that the media buys into, mainly because the Apthorp (literally) buys into their sites with advertising revenue. The building is a mess and the owners and management are crooks. Nothing's changed.

The 86-90% discounts reported in the NY Post are immensely greater than any I've ever seen
in a distressted property sale and seem to reflect a substantial poossibility that individual
deed owners will be wiped out in a foreclosure by Anglo-Irish Bank, or some other absolutely
calaitous event known to the buyers and sellers but not to the general public.

Those prices are too low even to pay down their proportionate share of AIB's loan, so they ust
reflect some terrible as yet undisclosed problem(s).

The 20-odd individual owners can't be foreclosed upon. Their units are no longer collateral for Anglo-Irish's loan. Bad things can happen, but not that.

7B that closed last month has an individual mortgage (ARM, interest-only until 2020,) but I'm pretty sure none of the previous buyers do.

That is interesting about no loans NWT, because there are rumors among brokers that I have talked to that the purchases might have only been "technically" arms length, that most were associates in some distant way of developer.

The real danger is that the no one knows the outcome of the building because every one involved is in some form of extremis. The stressed out bank has no capital to properly service the building and its needs. If they sell at auction, you will not know the intentions of any future buyer. There is always risk in buying into any distressed property.