Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Why do private sellers price so high?

Like all of us, we want maximum return from the investment we made - and unless you test the market, you don't know if someone wants to pay a premium for your "one owner" "tuned 6 monthly" "only played on Sundays and never in the rain" piano.

And I'd guess, a fair proportion of private sellers are in the process of spending extra $$$ on an upgrade, and would like to reduce the changeover figure as much as possible.

Alan - You forgot to mention that the piano was owned by Grandmama and She studied with Horowitz.

Jack Horowitz ?

if the seller bought the piano new, it's highly likely that their dealer told them the piano would only appreciate in value, or implied as much by telling them it was an "investment."

a piano is an investment--but not a financial investment!

most people do not know that pianos lose value just like cars do. they think instead they are like violins and only get more valuable as they get older.

if you are shopping for a used piano, i suggest you get a copy of larry fine's "the piano book" and take it with you to look at pianos. larry has an excellent chart in the book that helps you estimate the street value of a used piano.

you can educate the seller with this chart, as you educate yourself.

on the other hand, if the seller can find a buyer as ignorant as they are, they just might get their price.

I'm a little surprised to have someone say that new pianos are overpriced. It seems to me that given the complexities of the mechanism, expense of the materials etc., they're really not, especially with the pressure on prices from Asian imports.

What I meant was the rrp really. Most dealers are willing to give discounts, sometimes quite substantial ones which bring the sale price down. Even so a reasonable quality grand piano is still way beyond the reach of most people. I do take your point though and realise that there are many things that contribute to the cost of a new piano so the price is what it is.

On the used market though I often read ads which quote the rrp of a particular model for comparison. But that will not have been the price paid for that piano when it was new. And now it's second hand it should be even less.

This is a very reasonable line of logic, but just like a brand new car, the moment it is driven off the showroom floor, it has lost a huge chunk of its value even though it potentially still has close to 100% of its useful life remaining. I think brand new pianos are no different. The first year depreciation is brutal for reasons I still don't understand.

An SF Boesendorfer dealer recently had a piano for $90K even though its brand new price was closer to $129K just because it spent a week or two at the client's home, and they didn't like it. The dealer managed to have Boesendorfer provide full warranty again for the next owner, so factory warranty is not an issue, yet, that piano loss $39K in value. It doesn't make any sense, but is certainly a great deal, if I only had $90K to spend on a piano.

The bottom line in a free and open market is that you buy or sell at whatever price that you feel is right. The good old supply and demand is alway in effect.

Hard to understand what you mean here. Was the piano lent out for free in the hopes the client would buy it? No dealer would do that with a piano that they could sell for 129K if they knew that after two weeks they could only sell it for 90K. Also, those figures don't make sense even for a one year old piano. A piano doesn't lose 30% of its value in even a year.

I agree that most private sellers really don't know what their pianos at worth. Remember the old saw that it's hard to get a man to understand something when his income depends on him not understanding it,

I was ignorant coming into to market too and hope I don't have to sell any time soon. I paid around 22 k for an eight year-old c6 a few months ago. I doubt I could get that back out of it if I wanted to sell it right now.

However, unlike cars, a piano doesn't continually depreciate every year to nothing. After a couple of years, the price levels off, and the value during that plateau depreciates very little. In many instances, it will increase in dollar value (due to inflation) because the cost is mostly related to the cost difference from new.

I heard stories about years ago when a customer walked into a store and walked all around looking for the "clearance" buys. The saleman, frustrated that the customer wouldn't make a decision, instead told the customer to wait a minute. "In the back, we have a piano just like this one, but it has a ding on the lid. I can take $300 off that one." The customer lit up at this, so one of the other salesmen rushed off to the back with a hammer to produce the dinged piano. SOLD! The customer got the piano for a steal. Obviously, that was in a different economy.

The current economy is unusual. We've been stuck in it for so long we think it is normal. The numbers for many things are not normal. Why would some homes lose 70% of their value in 3 years? It's not normal. It may go on for a long time, but it will not last forever.

I don't really know all the details either as I wasn't shopping at that price range, the sales person didn't really go into it. He simply ask me to play it just because he had it. It was awesome. I think it was a 225. All I know is that it was sold to the family, and once sold, the warranty is normally not transferrable. In this case, the dealer arranged with the factory to re-apply the warranty to the next owner. The family that didn't like the 225 bought something else, a 290? It's one of those unlimited resource families used to being able to return anything was my impression. I think the dealer was fine financially, but was being completely honest with the history of the piano.

What I was trying to illustrate was here is a perfectly good piano. I tried it, and it was awesome, not a scratch on the body or anything else, but it had sat in someone's home for a couple of weeks, and is no longer brand new. The factory is putting their full warranty behind it, yet, it still suffer from depreciation even though it, for what I could tell, has 100% of its life remaining. It's all perception.

That's true. It does take a piano many more years to depreciate to zero. For Steinways, they seem to be always worth something no matter how old.

I saw on CL the same Baldwin grand for sale for months at $10K, no size, model or condition mentioned in the ad. The ad finally disappeared to shortly re-appear with the same lack of information but now worth $15K. Seemed odd to me that if no one is interested at $10K why the seller suddenly thinks it is now worth $15K.

I don"t think pianos drop 30% in value after two weeks.

My guess is that the dealer might have hoped you'd be interested in such a "good deal" and created a little story. Or perhaps if the people who had this piano in their home bought the piano and then traded it in for a larger one, the dealer got such a good price on the larger one he was able to offer the piano you played at a very good price.

I've seen this before too, particularly with dealers posing as private sellers...

I suppose the seller is more or less trying a different strategy rather than lowering the price; who knows, it may work sometimes.

Typically, the price is lowered rather than raised over time, unless a used piano dealer buys the piano and re-advertises it to make a profit. I’ve seen this happen before too, using the same photo of the original private seller.

I'm glad I'm not in the market to buy a pre-owned piano (unless a bargain comes along... )

Rick

No one mentioned the process and how markets work. Let's make a hypothetical where there are four pianos listed for sale each month. For simplicity, let us say two pianos are priced low, and two are priced high. The two that are priced low will sell quickly. The high priced ones sit.

After a year of this kind of market with no listing fees, there are 24 high priced pianos listed for sale (12 months worth) and two low priced pianos (the new ones for that month). A person new to shopping may conclude that 92% of sellers price way too high, even though in this hypothetical only 50% do so.

Real world markets are more complicated than this, but the example shows why so many highly priced pianos are listed for sale.

^ exactly what Sand Tiger said.

Same thing happens with anything on Craigslist - cars, cameras, furniture, whatever.

I think some owners are under the impression the harp is made from solid gold.

Those would be the Lyon & Healy "Celestial."

It's good to read this thread as it helps to hear other perspective that I'm not crazy as I navigate the used piano marketplace. Determining reference prices for used pianos is very tough and I'll be honest, in almost every case where I talked to a dealer or expert like a tuner/repair person who also just happens to sell pianos on the side (hmmmm), I get a shady salesperson vibe. "With a little work this piano would be worth 5x what I'm asking".

There's a sucker born every minute right? I'm trying my best not to be one, and the advice and searches for info in this forum has really helped. Just today I cancelled an appt to look at a baby grand Yamaha (GA1) based on the helpful info I read on this forum.