Outside of E-Bay, any great deals for a violin?

[Garth E.]

Flea markets, garage sales, dealers, pawn shops. Have you found any good deals outside of e-bay. By good deal I mean, a good price you were happy with from maybe the most unlikely place.

[Dwight Brown]

I'm not sure this is what you mean, but I've gotten some good buys on Tarisio and T2.  Not super cheap, but things I could afford at prices that were much below prices for instruments and bows by the same maker I have seen advertised.  I'm always hoping that an 18th century viola of more than 400mm will find me :-)

 

DLB

[rudall]

Surely anything you buy is at a price you are happy with. Otherwise why would you buy it?
And I wouldn’t call a dealer an unlikely place to find a violin. 

[jacobsaunders]

Fleabay is a good venue if you wish to clutter your whole garage/attic up with worthless garbage

[deans]

Good deals can be found anywhere, but with flea markets, garage sales, and pawn shops you will need to spend a lot of time kissing a lot of frogs. Better off spending an equal amount of time working somewhere part time, and saving enough to walk into a shop. I used to spend a lot of time at antique stores etc., but my first real decent viola came after spending time at a warehouse unloading trucks.

Some of the best deals are had between musicians, often good players are passed around among orchestra members. 

Of course the best deals are when somebody gives you an instrument. Happens more than you think and often with good instruments. I have been given a few decent items and done the same. 

[David Burgess]

OP, why do you think Ebay is a good place to find great deals on violins???

I was under the impression that it was more the opposite. I've even run across a fake Burgess or two offered for sale there, and know of a few other makers who have had similar experiences.

[Garth E.]

51 minutes ago, rudall said:

Surely anything you buy is at a price you are happy with. Otherwise why would you buy it?
And I wouldn’t call a dealer an unlikely place to find a violin. 

Depends what it is I'm buying. When I have to have something, I always seem to pay twice as much. 

[FiddleDoug]

An awful lot of people on Fleabay are either uneducated about violins,  expecting to get way more than they are worth, or are being dishonest about what the violins actually are. I don't even look there anymore. The other major problem with doing online auction is that you can't look the violin over in person, and the pictures that they actually supply don't show problems.

[David Burgess]

38 minutes ago, FiddleDoug said:

An awful lot of people on Fleabay are either uneducated about violins,  expecting to get way more than they are worth, or are being dishonest about what the violins actually are. I don't even look there anymore.

I investigated there for a little while, and then quickly put it out to pasture. I've gotten better deals from even the most shyster of the mainstream fiddle dealers.

[PhilipKT]

I have benefited from some wonderful deals that walked in off the street. “This is my grandfather’s violin/cello/viola, and he died a couple months ago.”

Most of these are junk, but a few of my students were really able to benefit from such instruments.

I also remember finding one nice pawn shop cello, an early 60s Pfretschner, with case and bow. Not the prettiest thing in the world, but it was a real cello, sounded good, and was only a couple of hundred dollars. The bow by itself was worth considerably more than I paid. That’s the only such deal I’ve ever found at a pawnshop, however.

[Violadamore]

2 hours ago, Garth E. said:

Flea markets, garage sales, dealers, pawn shops. Have you found any good deals outside of e-bay. By good deal I mean, a good price you were happy with from maybe the most unlikely place.

Yard sales, estate sales, thrift shops (especially those for local charities), and antique stores can all produce amazing bargains on instruments, accessories, and tools.  With pawn shops (national/regional chains in particular) and national charities, there's an increasing tendency for them to skim off the real bargains to sell in specialist venues, so you don't see them offered locally as often as you used to.

Estate sales are currently the best venue I've found for bargains to appear in.  Quite frequently, the heirs and any agents working for them are in too big a hurry to clear a property for sale as real estate to do "due diligence" on the contents.  Antique stores are often swamped with items they picked up in mixed lots at auction (while gunning for a single item their specialized expertise could identify) that they don't have a clue about. 

[stringcheese]

In the very early days of eBay I bought a few things (including a rather nice Andrew Hyde violin) but these days it is a very different place. Pretty much the last place I'd look. For a bargain in this sort of thing these days you have to know more than the seller, and that's pretty unlikely when they have it in front of them and you don't. And that's assuming they are honest and/or knowledgeable about what they are selling.

[David Burgess]

23 minutes ago, Violadamore said:

Yard sales, estate sales, thrift shops (especially those for local charities), and antique stores can all produce amazing bargains on instruments, accessories, and tools.  With pawn shops (national/regional chains in particular) and national charities, there's an increasing tendency for them to skim off the real bargains to sell in specialist venues, so you don't see them offered locally as often as you used to.

Estate sales are currently the best venue I've found for bargains to appear in.  Quite frequently, the heirs and any agents working for them are in too big a hurry to clear a property for sale as real estate to do "due diligence" on the contents.  Antique stores are often swamped with items they picked up in mixed lots at auction (while gunning for a single item their specialized expertise could identify) that they don't have a clue about. 

Most of my experience with estate sales has been that they were selling lifetime junk collections. Little or nothing of genuine value, and no genuinely good bargains.

But had I been willing to spend $3000 worth of time to get maybe $200 in savings, perhaps I could have done a lot better. I may just have an attitude problem. 

[jacobsaunders]

1 hour ago, Violadamore said:

Yard sales, estate sales, thrift shops (especially those for local charities), and antique stores can all produce amazing bargains on instruments, accessories, and tools. 

The dismaying aspect of estates, which I get sent to value by the probate court, is explaining to heirs, who have been told what riches await them, that they should shove the junk in the skip outside. Up until now, it was never worth the petrol/train ticket/time going there. If you like wallowing in junk, you should be able to fill your garage though.

[deans]

6 minutes ago, jacobsaunders said:

Up until now

What happened now? Ship finally come in? 

[jacobsaunders]

1 minute ago, deans said:

What happened now? Ship finally come in? 

what are you talking about?

[Jeffrey Holmes]

Would you actually "know" if/when you found one (a great deal)? I'm not trying to be a smart "donkey", but I usually  hear this question from those who are looking for less risky shopping venues (and don't want to pay the price for the expertise) or giveaways... and I join the voices that question if Ebay is a "good" place to find great deals.  Rare in my experience (and I would likely know if I saw one).

 

[Violadamore]

49 minutes ago, Jeffrey Holmes said:

Would you actually "know" if/when you found one (a great deal)?

Yup. 

2 hours ago, David Burgess said:

I may just have an attitude problem. 

Oh, goody.  An area of agreement.     

 

2 hours ago, jacobsaunders said:

The dismaying aspect of estates, which I get sent to value by the probate court, is explaining to heirs, who have been told what riches await them, that they should shove the junk in the skip outside. Up until now, it was never worth the petrol/train ticket/time going there. If you like wallowing in junk, you should be able to fill your garage though.

Checking the yard sales (many of which are open-air estate sales) in this general area for specific items doesn't take a lot of effort.  OTOH, "strip-mining" the sales like a friend of mine most profitably does, quickly becomes a full time job, but yields them several thousand dollars a month.  A lot of valuable, easy to resell items (e.g., precious metals) get overlooked at these sales.

[martin swan]

Personally I think the whole idea of getting a "bargain" violin to be misguided.

This is an extremely competitive market, and the good stuff is never cheap.

[Violadamore]

One note about what Jacob keeps saying about heirs' expectations.  In this part of the USA, where a lot of people retire to, the families are often spread from sea to shining sea, and just want to empty the safe deposit box and the bank account, collect the insurance, sell the real estate, collect the vehicles, and get done with it all as fast as possible.  They usually have no idea what personal keepsakes Granny still had, or what any of it might be worth.  They seem to figure that the house contents are all trash anyway, the exact reverse of what Jacob describes.  In this environment, you'd be surprised at what turns up at the sales, priced to disappear quickly. 

[deans]

3 minutes ago, Violadamore said:

In this environment, you'd be surprised at what turns up at the sales, priced to disappear quickly. 

Any pics?

[Violadamore]

1 hour ago, deans said:

Any pics?

No.     Well, maybe one.  That "Voirin" bow that I got a rough valuation on here a while back (of around $600).  It sold along with another bow, a vintage mint-condition American Case Company case, and various accessories, none of which I needed advice on, for $37 at an open-air estate yard sale.  Pretty typical. 

What my friend keeps turning up includes things like gold jewelry found mixed with costume, haute couture in a lot with Sears, sterling silver items by the hundredweight treated like plate,  and so on.  One diamond tennis bracelet pitched among the Sarah Coventry makes his week.   He sells everything, BTW, and has arrangements with recyclers and resellers.    

[MarkBouquet]

I’ve gotten many bargains on tools at estate sales, some that I kept and some that I resold for a price that made it worth the effort. The garage is always the first place I go. I’ve also found valuable books and sometimes furniture items, some that require restoration, but I have the skills to do that. However, though I’ve seen many violins over the years, I’ve never seen one worth carrying out the door, even if it was free. But it should be admitted that I’m not one of those people who’s willing to stand in line out front waiting for the sale to open. So who knows what they got and I missed.

By the way, by my definition an estate sale is one where they open the entire house up. A yard/garage sale is one where a family just gathers the stuff they don’t want and they put it out on the driveway. I never go to the latter. Sometimes yard sellers call it an estate sale, though I’m sure they actually know better.

[Shelbow]

I got one or maybe two things from ebay which might be decent ish or atleast worth more than they cost. One needs some repair/setup then I might get it appraised. 

Nothing amazing though, not a fine instrument or anything. 

[Violadamore]

11 minutes ago, MarkBouquet said:

But it should be admitted that I’m not one of those people who’s willing to stand in line out front waiting for the sale to open. So who knows what they got and I missed.

That's what you have to do, really, if you're doing it seriously.