jacobsaunders

I posted to this subject many years ago

over the past couple of hundred years there will have been a couple of tens of thousands of people who made violins, Should you wish to remain friends with the people around youre coffee table after youre discussion, you should perhaps avoid repeatedly naming some random individual from all off those thousands of makers, and expecting people to politely and patiently explain why it isn’t one of those

When I first started posting on this forum, I was warned that Americans don’t understand sarcasm

Your original question was if a cello with no concrete attribution could be worth $100,000. After 3 pages, the only plausible clue was a colleague who was reminded of a Seitz cello he repaired 30 years ago. I spent decades as a court appraiser, and came to hate the question “what something is worth”, since it is a question that one cannot satisfactorily answer, rather one can only really search for comparisons. Often one must be satisfied that one cannot identify a 19thC maker, and be happy to have a nice cello. Everyone up to now has been too polite to point out that 100,000 for a cello that one cannot attribute with confidence would be outrageously expensive

I posted pictures of a schweitzer cello here

Saxon with an American neck graft

I hadn’t realised that holes are so expensive

Should you wish anybody to opine on a cello, you will have to provide pictures

The absence of linings and the wobbly "purfling" beneath the button and the beech fingerboard, also make me wonder if it couldn'd be from the Salzkammergut. Is the scrol/neck also beech?

The original question was if the OP fiddle could be a “worthwhile investment”. I think that matter is now clarified beyond any reasonable doubt.

I wonder which American dealer glued a label in that one

I have a sneaking suspicion you don’t know what rs Williams and sons was You are quite right, I have never heard of Williams & Sons. I do however have the pictures you posted, and can draw quite clear conclusions from that

No end of American dealers glued labels into imported continental comercial violins (Jusek etc.). “High end” of what?

In Paris, anything east of Strassborg is “Ecole d’l est”

I've never heard of pietro vareni neopoli violins, so I presume it is just a made up name by some american dealer who stuck apokriphal labes into "usuals" that he imported from Markneukirchen, so I woud consider it a "usual" and ignore the fake labe