Violin prices, Dealer v private sale Options

[fiddlesticks]

I sold one of my bows through a shop on commission. I had tried to sell it privately first, as I thought it would be very easy to sell, it was a lovely player and in quite nice condition.
Over about a year I offered it for sale to various friends and colleagues who were quite happy to use it for weeks or months on end, but I could not really find anyone who liked it enough to buy it for the money I was asking (which was a fair bit less than the insurance valuation).

Out of frustration I decided to bite the bullet and try to sell it to a shop, although they were not interested in buying it directly from me they did offer to sell it on commission. I needed to get it re-haired and a new thumb grip before they would show it to customers, but after 3 months it was sold.
The shop was actually able to sell it for a higher price than I had been asking myself, and even taking into account the 20% commission and re-hair I was still slightly up on what I would have been prepared to accept privately (IMG:style_emoticons/default/party1.gif)