From real ads only please.

Here's one I just found:

Turn of the Century Antique
Only $19,995 Valued at $14,995

My favorite has happened dozens of times:

That must be a Yawniets piano.

You know, that would be real fun to play!

To have the pianos scale direction flipped! Keeping the "low A" now a High A, and high C a low C

See what I mean? Top note = lowest now, etc.

Plays everything reversed!

You must be a good magician to get that piano to balance on two legs.

The difficult I do at once. The impossible simply takes a little longer.

[Apologies to the Signal Corps.]

Funny, who would have ever guessed that the person who owns and is selling this piano neither plays nor knows anything about pianos?

It gave it away to me when the fly lid was not opened... poor pianos, to be owned by morons!

http://houston.craigslist.org/fuo/1643603074.html

Well, at least they admitted to buying it as a decoration...

Cary, I recognize that piano. A now bankrupt local dealer (part of a large regional chain) was really pushing these a few years back. It's under 5 feet ( I can't remember if it was 4'9 or 4'10"), and was selling back then for about $4700 brand new. It was a TERRIBLE piano, too. Really nasty sounding. The salesman claimed that it was a German brand piano. When I pushed a bit harder he admitted that it was a German brand made in China. A more honest salesman at the same store admitted that these were mostly sold to people who don't play and only want them for decorations.

Here is another lid blooper.

http://omaha.craigslist.org/msg/1648047502.html

You know what? That is kind of a cool piano!

Very Liberace-ish

I find it really sad when a lovely piano is just a decoration and never gets played. Not to say that the piano in that ad was lovely, if anything it was probably only meant to be a decoration. There's not a lot of < 5 foot pianos that sound worth playing.

What's especially sad about that ad is that it was deliberately placed in the "furniture for sale" category.

Not really a blooper but actually posted in an ad on Pianomart today:
An eighty year old Steinway that gets far more female attention than famous octogenarian Hugh Hefner could ever imagine possible.

I didn't even notice the category, but you're right it's sad. I think, though, that the piano in the picture is probably best categorized as furniture. I've seen alot of these very small PSO's flooding the market lately, as people who thought that a Piano-Shaped-Object would look smart in their decorating plan now want to recoup the $5k they put into that shiny thing they use as a picture stand.

I just wrote out a whole reply in which I was agreeing with the overall opinion, but now after thinking about it more, I decided I think it's fine that people use pianos purely as furniture. I mean, it's fine for people to use old sewing machines as furniture, even if they don't sew.

One could say that it's okay in the case of old sewing machines because they're antiques, and so it's also okay to use only antique pianos as furniture, but not these new inexpensive ones.

But then I thought - why not have a piano-shaped piece of furniture that doesn't even make music? That would be fine, even interesting to see in someone's house. They could put pictures on it or what not. Maybe it would even lack keys, or only have a few keys as a kind of gesture to real pianos, as the source of the inspiration.

People seem to really like grand pianos for displaying pictures. I think it's because they are high enough so that it functions as a shelf and not a table. As a table it would look cluttered and wasted, but as a shelf it looks okay to have lots of pictures on it (and snow globes or what not).

Still there's something depressing about the whole thing - either a cheap piano made to be just furniture or a piano shaped table with a few non-functional keys.

Not piano, but antique, related:

Seen in a local antique store

'Antique TV cabinets from £175.00, made to measure'

Who said piano dealers were the world's worst?

Not exactly a blooper, but this ebay listing is rather extraordinary...

Charles, your post made me laugh! I agree, if people use old sewing machines as furniture, why not use pianos. I thin it would be lovely to see a house full of piano-shaped-objects for furniture.

A small stumpy legged baby grand PSO for a coffee table, distorted Dali-esque upright whose keys are the seat of a sofa, and an old player piano with the player mechanism removed so that the place where the roll went is empty and could be used as a bar for my vodka and scotch.

The dining room table would be a 7 foot grand, and I could use spinets as seats.

For the master bedroom, a concert grand with a matress inside of it for the bed... of course, it would need to be a Bosendorfer Imperial because it's extra wide and I want to be able to use my California King mattress in it.

For the swimmig pool, or hot tub, I think a Fazzioli 10 footer, hollowed out and fitted with seats would work nicely!

David that is one interesting read.

i got so bored and lost 1/2 way through it I decided to just skip to the bottom and watch the video!

British humor is so far different from american! I can barely understand what was going on in that dialog that seller wrote up!!

Did someone say piano bar???

http://omaha.craigslist.org/fuo/1635012295.html

Would that be an Ellenburger?

The PSO discussed here, and it's brothers and sisters, may very well be a terrible piano. I don't know, I've never seen one to be able to pre-judge it.

However, I'm willing to bet that most, if not all, of the people I encounter that have amazingly terrible pianos would LOVE to have one. As a self proclaimed landfill piano tuner I encounter many unbelievably horrible pianos that are next to unplayable. The people can afford no better and are struggling along with what they have.

Believe me, they would think they had died and gone to heaven if they somehow could get one of these.

I could tell hair raising stories about some these landfill pianos and I bet just about every tuner could tell their share.

Terrible is relative!

That's pretty nice! It's sad to see the woodwork of these old uprights go to the landfills, so all the better if people find uses for them. Pianos tend to have an awkward shape but they do seem like they could be more creatively used, like this.

Terrible is definitely relative. I should know. I own (and play) a Winter spinet. Someday . . . .

Then there is a new fortepiano that's for left handed (by Christopher Seed).

And I'm one of them =p

After playing on a digital piano for 15 years, I long for the touch of an acoustic to help develop my technique. To me, sound isn't much of a big problem - as long as the piano has even action and can hold a tune, I'd love to have one just for practice.

They wrote 20K but meant(I think)2K:

http://newyork.craigslist.org/que/msg/1654367765.html

Did you notice that it is a "steinway yamaha upright"?

I think those were just added for keywords. But man a $20,000 spinet? When will one ever be worth that?

I played a spinet at an antique store today... or at least I tried! I couldn't get a single key to play.

This piano is $2 and set up and moving are included?

http://stlouis.craigslist.org/msg/1644592004.html

Suppose they meant 2K?