If I had had a thousand pounds this morning . . .

Look what we missed

And I'm on Ebay agonising whether to bid 50p higher for a book never mind increments of a £100

I wish I had room for a grand (or a grand to buy it with!) Last year, though, I did take a chance and buy my lovely Petrof upright on Ebay. It is a lovely modern piano, great tone and touch that suits me very well. I have not researched its vintage, but it was so new that the pedals still had their covering on them. I paid £820.00!

As you can probably gather, I am absolutely delighted with it.

Hmm, it (the Yamaha) looks great, but I think it would be a brave move to buy something so expensive on e bay unless you had checked it over first. I am trying to dissuade a parent of a pupil from bidding on a piano she has never seen on the other side of the country (child reported to me that it matched their furniture...). Fairly recently there was a lovely 2nd hand Bluthner upright in our local piano shop that was within their budget (insurance payout after the floods) - I couldn't persuade them to even look at it, sigh...

Sounds like you got lucky, Nannyjay!

OMG!!!



£1000! The Yamaha upright cost £3,000

Boo hoo hoo, sob, wail

I see how anyone could go wrong getting this instrument for a thousand quid.

Usually I try to stay away from auctions in general and ebay in particular.
But, seeing something like this makes me want to visit them again after all...

There's no way I'd pay £1000 to a seller with zero feedback, however nice the item looks!

I think I might just have risked it in this case! I wonder if it fell off the back of a lorry? Surely they could have got more for it by selling it through a local newspaper even? Seems ridiculous!

A pupil of mine got a U1 from ebay for £1200, and it's a lovely instrument - perfect condition and lovely tone. I advised them against it, having not seen or heard it, but they really did get a bargain! And I just bought a Trevor James flute myself for £112 - which arrived in perfect condition 24 hours later. But usually I'm dithering over 50p for a book like ad libitum! I've done petty well on books recently - 35 Chopin pieces for £1.20, 7 volumes of slightly simplified classics for children for £1.50 (I think), My Fair Lady score for £1-something, Sound of Music score for 4 hands for 99p - to name but a few!

POPIGKE


(See Dingbats thread...)

Pig in a poke!

Val

(We're getting everywhere!)

Maybe we should swap Ebay i.ds so I don't start upping the price on a book if you've already bid on it

The same thought just occurred to me! I'll PM you! Let's make a rule that the first of us that bids doesn't get upped by the other!

Er, that's a cartel, and possibly illegal ...

...and starting price £100????

I know some-one who bought a piano on ebay (don't know how much they paid, but I guess that it wasn't very much) and it proved to be a disaster. I was teaching the child of the family, and my piano tuner went to look at the piano to see what could be done for it, but apparently it was beyond repair. (The family didn't know that I knew the piano tuner and got his version of events!) A salutary lesson perhaps.

Oops!

Sorry Primrose.... Just for that you don't get to join our cartel

Anecdotal evidence is no basis for sound judgements.

My grandfather lived into his late eighties, but it wasn't because of the health benefits of pork pies, or the teaspoon of salt he poured on every meal, or the 40 Woodbine untipped that he smoked every day.

What we need are some statistics, then you can make some senssible judgements about risk/benefits. What are selling prices on eBay relative to other sources, proportion of dodgy items, etc. Relative trustworthiness of private sellers v. commercial outlets, etc. I don't know anywhere that provides this sort of analysis.

But a Yamaha C3 for £1000? The case, metal frame and keys have to be worth that, even if the sound board, wrest plank, felts, and half the strings are k*******d.

Well, I can at least offer anther anecdote.
I was able to purchase on ebay a Silver Bach Stradivarius 37 trumpet in excellent condition at a fraction of the price I would have been able to find one in a music store.

Part of having success on ebay is spending enough time researching the market you want to purchase in, knowing what prices are, what the pitfalls are and being able to formulate the right questions to ask the seller to ensure you aren't buying a "pig in a poke" (to keep pork in the discussion.)

Maybe - assuming you would actually get a Yamaha C3!

Our Howarth S40 Oboe for £780 was an excellent purchase. I had to risk sending a bankers draft and sweatting until it arrived. In the end it didn't even need a service! Add to that the Moeck Bass Recorder for just over £200 and I had a good ebay year in 07.

On the subject of ebay - some of the tutor books and Grade books are pretty expensive here, once the postage is taken into consideration. I've done well with some more obscure items, and am delighted with some things that I wouldn't have found anywhere else, but I was a bit surprised at what people expect to sell AB and TG books for in relation to the standard RRP!

I brought a Yamaha digital piano off ebay for £200 less than I'd seen it elsewhere and it turned up the following morning at 7am, so I was very happy with that. Mr Blackbird was furious . Then a couple of days later, I was offered an upright piano for free - was gutted about that as I didn't have anywhere to put it. I've brought a couple of violins off ebay but I had to restring one of them and the cost of the strings was more than I paid for the violin! I'm still trying to find a bargain flute - my friend got a really good one for £5 in a charity shop.

Really wish I'd got that free piano, could have squeezed it in somewhere but I had to make a decision either a piano or a parrot cage, and the parrot cage won out (I've got to sneak it in while Mr Blackbird is out)

I have found that with the "common" books you can get bargains when they are sold as a "job lot" - I have just bought 4 "early piano books" including two well-known tutors and two books I didn't know for 10p (+ very reasonable postage). I bought a lot of oboe music this way (ie one piece I really wanted with three or four other pieces I didn't know anything about for a pittance) and most of the time the things I didn't know in the "lot" have turned out to be interesting as well.