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I've got it in my head to downsize a bit, though I'm not that cramped or in need of cash. I was given a nice acoustic to restore, and now I feel like I have one too many...
Seems like archtops, especially boutique ones, aren't moving, and I've been turned down for consigning at several area stores, even ones that deal in jazz/vintage.
Shipping was an eye-popper, too- pricing coast-to-coast for a heavy, jumbo size case, was $180, cheapest, up to $273 for USPS, PLUS insurance.
So, if you've sold, consigned, or traded in a guitar lately- how did it go?
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05-22-2024 06:53 PM
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Curious why you were turned down for consignments locally.......
Originally Posted by JGinNJ
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Either it wasn't "their wheelhouse" or the "off brand, boutique ones just aren't moving". Originally Posted by Dennis D
If you have a Gibson, Fender, etc. it will sell.
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That is too bad..... Originally Posted by JGinNJ
I guess I just don't have the patience to listen to the stories any more.....
good luck !
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The used archtop market seems weak at the moment.
I've seen some very tempting prices on Guild Artist Awards, Heritage Super Eagles, and used Campellones.
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I am wondering about the best way to sell my L5 CES. I don't want to ship a 1981 arch top with a case. It weighs quite a bit.
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I only sell face to face for cash locally through craigslist due to scamming, cheating, dishonest, lying buyers and no pay ebayers who outbid others (I always started auctions low) and then didn't pay. Endless excuses. "Didn't have cell phone service, I was camping". I don't care to recall details of a couple of those incidents but it led me to never deal with online sales again as a seller, never mind the now exorbitant fees and greater difficulty making ebay listings. I have had lousy fortunes selling stuff online. Never again.
Craigslist on the other hand.....Literally not one bad deal with anyone through CL as a buyer or seller and that includes non musical stuf like tools, four wheelers, motorcycles, pets, furniture, bathtubs, you name it. Last item was a guitar that someone contacted me about to tentatively meet in a few days. The next day another out of state buyer contacted me and put me in touch with a local friend of his who met me at Cabelas for the deal and brought cash. First interested party asked me the next day "I saw you took your ad down". Yep, sold. I don't price sky high I price to move. Anyways, I have sold a lot of gear in the Cabela's parking lot and met a lot of cool guys face to face on craigslist.
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During corona, I started selling unneeded gear by way of Yahoo Auction (I’m in Japan). I cull the items to sell, clean them up a bit, find whatever documentation and accessories, and drop them off with a friend who does the photos and listing, customer service, packing and shipping, for a reasonable cut. It’s fast, stuff usually sells in a week, and, most importantly to me, the whole thing is hassle free.
So far, we sold several guitars, a few amps, a couple dozen pedals and assorted sundries. I use the proceeds to fund another purchase. In fact, I got my eye on a couple items to buy, so I’m currently playing through my collection, including some archtops, to identify the next candidates for passing onward.
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I agree with your philosophy and your reasoning. I haven’t bought or sold many things in the last few years because I moved the extra stuff out when we retired and downsized from house to apartment. I try to limit buying and selling to people I know, which includes those with whom I’ve established an ongoing relationship through this forum even if we haven’t met face to face. Distant transactions with strangers are getting really risky. Originally Posted by DawgBone
Here’s a typical example: I tried to buy a 15” Foster archtop 7 that was posted in the sale section here for almost 2 years off and on at a very unrealistic price. The seller wouldn’t provide high res pics or any objective info about the guitar. I finally offered to fly to the airport in his city with cash (I had enough frequent flyer miles for a ticket), so I could check it out myself in the airport lounge and agree on a price based on its true condition and needs (which were impossible to know from the scant info and lousy pics in his ad). He never replied. But he contacted me months later and started the same runaround again. Months after that, it appeared again but for trade only.
I also use CL, but my experience has been different from yours. For every legitimate serious buyer, I get about 20 weirdos, scammers, and tire kickers. I do my CL transactions at the club where I play. Buyers can try stuff out before or after a show, and I can check out anything I buy.
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"For every legitimate serious buyer, I get about 20 weirdos, scammers, and tire kickers."
Yep. Once I was selling a really heavy keyboard w the specs listed in the ad. Since I don't sell out of the house I agreed to meet a guy who seemed super interested. So on a hot day I lugged it out of the attic, loaded it in the car and met him at the usual public place I do CL deals.
He was very late to begin with and when he finally showed up he kept looking it up and down like he'd never seen a keyboard before. Then he tried to lift it and that's when I knew I'd wasted my time "gee, you seemed to lift it pretty easy but it's really heavy for me, I'll have to do some research on it"
And that was only one in many tire kickers I've run into. But at least I learned a lesson about some people's punctuality, now when I'm gonna meet someone I tell them to contact me when they get there and I'll be right over. You wouldn't believe how many are a half hour or more late or flat out don't show.
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These are just two suggestions for thinning the herd - maybe not sales stories as such, but maybe they'll help -
1. Ask yourself ' If something happened to me, tomorrow, who would I want to have one of my guitars' ? - - nephew, etc etc . Then just pretend it's that time when the attorney is reading your will, and give it to that person. Worse case, it's one less to sell.
2. If you have a lower end guitar, consider donating it to Guitar for Vets. Not sure they're worldwide, but they are US. Local dealers act as donation locations and do the setups etc. I learned my $500 - $700. selling price becomes $400. or less pretty fast, in which case a hassle-free donation to a good cause starts to look like a good solution.
Hope this helps.
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Like many others here, I could probably write a book about my adventures in guitar flipping. I've made some great friends, both virtually, and IRL. I finally gave up during COVID, after a few back-to-back incidents that made me realize I just didn't have the heart to continue. One was the person who complained, returned, and left horrid feed-back on Reverb after buying an early-70s Japanese Epiphone flat-top for $300, because the glue work on the braces was sloppy. I'm not sure what else one would expect from a $300 early 70s Epiphone. The other was the buyer of a 50s Gretsch, because the frets were skinny, and while I disclosed that the frets were original, with and not in need of a fret job, I neglected to say that they were skinny. You know. Like original frets on a 50s Gretsch. Reverb refused to remove the negative feedback on those. I had never received negative feedback on any platform before, and prided myself on being a straight shooter. That's when I realized that the vintage guitar buying and selling hobby, and those who were not participating in it, had largely changed into something that didn't really appeal to me anymore.
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These days I would only consider selling stuff in one of 4 ways (listed in order of preference):
1. Craigslist. I have had my share of flakes and scammers, but it has mostly worked out well and I get cash and don't have to worry once the sale is done.
2. This forum. There is shipping cost (and worry) and transaction fees, but I have bought and sold here and have always been pleased with the outcome.
3. Reverb and Ebay. Only small items are considered as the risk of scams and cost of shipping and the cost of fees make this route something that I would no longer consider for an item that is over say $100. I used to sell expensive gear through these platforms, but no longer.
4. Consignment. I have not gone through this route in decades, but if I had a high end guitar that I could not sell on Craigslist or through this forum, I would take that item to Gryphon and let them take their 25 percent.
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Here's what I do: I get the usual tire kickers and scammers too but I sort it out easier by saying in the ad: "FOR FASTEST RESPONSE PLEASE TEXT" Juan too tree - fore f!ve sicks, etc etc I DON"T CHECK EMAILS OFTEN". Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
This way when someone emails me I already know that person is not someone I am likely to deal with or is someone offering trades, usually of gear I don't want, but I don't see harm in them asking. I like trades. I actually don't check my email often maybe once or twice a week if I"m running an ad but obviously the emailer didn't read the ad, and if they did, and still emailed me instead of texting then they aren't serious. Serious buyers have GAS and always text.
The only downside I can think of is an ad with even a veiled phone number like that can sometimes attract call center scam calls in some quantity and they are autogenerating numbers so blocking them doesn't work. The others are text scammers but they are easy to see through because they want you to enter codes. When I was running a lot of listings I could get a few dozen of those scam calls a day and four or five scam texts. The scam texts died off with my more recent listings but if you ever engage a scam call center to waste their time on a couple separate occasions they will put you on more scam center call lists so at one point I was getting 150 scam calls a day, lol Best not to answer.
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Having bought and sold over one hundred archtop’s it’s an easy market to sell but with one caveat. That your price is slightly below the market. Why? Because any guitar priced to maximize its value is “advertised for display purposes only.”
Every guitar was shipped via FedEx via my account, it’s much cheaper to ship if you’ve got an account. Learn to package your guitar to sustain a 4’ drop. That’s the belt 4’ above the floor it travels on when arriving to the FedEx shipping center. There’s plenty of “how to package guitars properly” information both on this forum and online.
I get that people are reluctant to ship because of risk. But the facts are that you can minimize the risk by packaging properly. My shipments typically were 50 pounds. That’s what a triple boxed shipment weighs. Do not ship your precious guitar in a single box with peanuts!
How do you triple box an archtop? You double box, and then insert folded Amazon boxes on both sides of the case. What you’re doing is quadrupling the strength of cardboard by doing so. I isolate the case 4” on the bottom with dense foam. Same for each side of the neck. Overkill? You better believe it because you’re about to go to war by shipping anything. Better safe than sorry.
Additionally you can minimize the risk to you by having your local shipping center package and ship the item. It’s more expensive than a regular shipment but it can be done. If anything were to happen your covered for the worth of the item.
Also, extensively photograph the condition of your guitar before being boxed, and after it is boxed, so you have proof of its condition, and how it was packaged, prior to shipping.
Bottom line, you avail yourself to far many more potential buyers than simply trying to sell it locally.
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I don't do texts for the very reasons stated, scam and spam. And the email account I use for CL isn't my main account so return emails don't have my name attached. Using these methods scams and spam are almost non existent for me. Once someone gets your name, email address or phone number you run a high risk of them being sold and converted to scamspam.
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Sounds harsh but I minimise risk by putting all of it on the buyer.
I have sold two guitar to the US and on both occasions, the seller had to pay me in full, upfront via bank transfer and pay and organise the shipping and insurance.
I feel bad doing it because I want people to feel comfortable and there's no way I would do that.
One of those buyers is a fellow member and the other, a women who called me out of the blue on whatspp. I couldn't decide if she was a scammer or not as it was a little left field. I decided to do the typically English thing of talking around the houses (shooting the breeze), so I could sus her authenticity out. We got onto the conversation of Wes and she said "Wes is bumpin" and she "loved Bebe". That was the password to my trust account lol.
Even still she had to pay up front and organise insurance.
Luckily for both parties, I'm a stand up guy (just ask my lawyer) and both received their guitars as described and both were happy campers.
So now my Ibanez GB100 is in Palo Alto and my Ibanez 2471 is with Chris near Boston.
I have a moto which I gleamed from a friend regarding price, "always leave some meat on the bone". Everyone is happy when people feel they had a good deal and of course, a huge part of the pleasure of selling a guitar, is the joy you can help create in someone, by acting in good faith and letting them know, they've been looked after price wise.
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Yeah, I haven't shipped a guitar for well over a year or so, maybe nearly two years. I recently did one, and was shocked at how the rates have gone up on my FedEx acct. Yikes. Originally Posted by JGinNJ
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The story of my 175 will haunt me to the grave. I got my first guitar (a United Elitone flattop for $10 new) at 9. By the time I was 11, I’d gotten good enough to justify a better guitar, and my parents bought me a new LG-1 from Music City in Atlantic City. At 13, I got a DeArmond soundhole pickup and a 5 Watt Kay amp, formed a band, and actually got gigs at local dances. Our parents and their friends started hiring us for parties, and within a year we were playing at least 2 or 3 times a month for $10 to $15 each.
The owner of Music City always tried to help me, even lending me an SG and a decent amp when we auditioned for Ted Mack. By my freshman year in high school, I really needed better gear. He eventually found me a well used but decent ‘59 or ‘60 175DN (we didn’t care about the actual year back then - there were no scammers and all that mattered was the guitar itself) and charged me what I now realize was a “subsidized” price to get it in my hands. He put it in a battered Gretsch case because I couldn’t afford the original Gibson HC, which was fine with me.
I loved that guitar like a brother, and it was my only gigging axe for a decade. In its 11th year with me, I got the bug for an L5 and ordered a CN with a monkey on a stick. A friend who didn’t play told me several times that he wanted to learn and would buy my 175 if I ever wanted to sell it. I did, he did, and the L5 was everything we feared it would be from Norlin. It had a splice in the binding, an irregular patch of bare wood under and around the fingerboard end, and numerous minor flaws. My dealer was as shocked as I was and took it back without question or hesitation.
My friend wouldn’t sell my 175 back to me, although he never learned to play. I tried multiple times over a few years, even offering him a decent profit or a new 175. He eventually retired and I lost track of him and my guitar. Even though I’ve played only 7s for about 30 years now, I’d still love to have my guitar back.
That’s the inspiration behind “never should have sold it”.
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I don't think any of my family would want my guitars but they'd enjoy selling them! Originally Posted by Dennis D
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This is a helpful thread for someone like me, who hasn't sold a guitar since the late 80's. I have one that I'm thinking of letting go and been wondering how I should go about it in the modern world. Thanks forum!
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My most recent de-acquisitions have been Reverb (1), trade-in at GC, and donation (1 to a relative, 2 to schools).
GC pays a lot less than you can get selling privately, but it’s quick cash with no shipping or hassle, so sometimes worthwhile. Reverb yields the widest audience and I’ve had no problems buying or selling there. It also gets you good shipping rates and insurance. I’ve tried both CL and Facebook market place, without success. Ditto for consignment.
Shipping sucks, though. I’ve had issues with USPS and FedEx both losing things (and eventually finding them), but not UPS. If you just do regular “retail” shipping (without going through Reverb or having your own account), it’s extremely expensive, which makes Reverb attractive to me.
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Sounds about right. When I decided my Sadowsky SS15 wasn't for me and spoke with a local shop that does jazz/archtop sales about consignment it was the same story. "any archtop is going to move move slow in this market" followed by "wait, is this an import?" Sorry buddy, I can't help you". (paraphrasing). Originally Posted by JGinNJ
Now it did sell on reverb in less than 48 hours, to someone familiar with the model, but generally I think the shop owner was correct.
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