Posted by js on May 20, 2002 at 19:55:25:
In Reply to: Re: Re: Blue Book Value posted by dp on May 20, 2002 at 12:05:02:
I understand your point, but my experience is that many (most?) of your "s.c., p. w. t..." etc. are bargain hunters. As a seller/family bread-winner, (and with my very poor imitation of an Hispanic accent) "I don' need no stinkin' bargain hunters."
One example of a waste-o-time/bargain-hunter is a well-known dealer who is oft touted here as an all-around "good guy". I had a very nice instrument for sale a few years ago and got a call from this dealer (me: one of the very first to purchase Caller I.D. - worth its weight in gold) who represented himself as "a teacher, who was trying to help out a student of his who was on a tight budget"...(and even tighter, since his shop overhead needed to be covered by a nice margin on a tuba bought from an ignorant sucker from Memphis)
...Surely Dale, you've heard this spiel hundreds of times when you've offered many of your own tubas for sale.
Frankly, I (as a seller) can find quite enough of those types of guys walking right in my doors off the streets of Memphis. I just finished selling a 52-year-old Bach Strad. trumpet on ebay. Do you think that it was a typical raggety-*ss ebay N.Y. Strad? Nope, because I restored it (dammit), and files/sandpaper are not in my toolbox. Would it have been better for me to allow walk-ins and internet bbs "collector-professional" types to ship it back-and-forth betwixt their brotherhood, dent it up, and blow all their b**gers through it? Maybe so, but instead I threw it up on ebay for 10 days with superb pictures and a superb (honest) description (including the factory "shop card" info). I stuffed it in a box today and ran some guy's credit card through for $2500. Could I have gotten more? Maybe --- ' probably not. If I had shopped it around to some of your c-p types, though, I predict that by now it would be damaged and unsold with me suffering several chatty long distance called about "the GREAT old Bach I USED to have back in 1963..." and "how yours, Joe, just doesn't quite "focus"-"project"-"play-in-tune", "you-name-it..." like I hoped it would, so I'm sending it back.
:^/
(no offense intended towards well-behaving and serious-shopping c./p. types...' see you guys on ebay)
;^)