When I was a young man, I went through many different uprights until I finally settled on a beautiful, used, "gray market" Yamaha U-3. It was a big, hulking monster, with a shiny black case. It belted out big bass notes, and it had the signature Yamaha touch: smooth and super-easy to play, almost mind-reading.
Finally I gave up my U3 to get a cheapo grand.
Very soon after my cheapo grand arrived home and I began playing it, I started kicking myself for waiting so long to switch to a grand.
Grand pianos have a superior design: they have better touch, better sound, and a much better and broader color palette, allowing far more room for artistic expression.
The hammers on an upright piano strike the strings from the front, away from the pianist. Most of the sound on on upright goes out the back. When I turned my uprights so that the back faced the center of the room, my audience reported much better sound quality. It did nothing much for me as the pianist, since I was on the wrong side of the instrument.
The hammers on a grand piano strike the strings from underneath and send the sound up and out and into the face of the pianist. When you get your grand piano home and prop the lid open and begin to play, you should feel as if you are sitting in front of a great canyon or Cathedral with magnificent acoustics.
With the economy hitting a rough patch, piano shops are especially eager to deal. If you arrive with a check for 10K and say that you want to purchase a piano that is priced around 12-14K, your local piano dealer might find it terribly difficult to say 'No.'
Good pianos age very, very slowly. This means that there is remarkably little objective difference between a new grand and the same model that is five or even ten or fifteen years old.
Quite a few pianos in America are purchased and brought home and played for a couple of months before they are left to sit and gather dust. Not a lot of mileage on many of the used pianos out there. Granny only used it on Sundays until she got bored.
Again, if a good piano is restored--new hammers or pinblock or etc. as needed--then it can be thirty years old and still be objectively quite similar to the same model purchased new.
That means you can get a lot of used grand piano for 10K these days. Most dealers do not want you to know this, of course, because they make a lot more money on the purchase of new pianos.
A note of caution: you should avoid tiny grands. You should know, for example, that a 5'6" grand can be quite nice for the home while a 5'1" grand almost never is. Those five inches might not seem like much, but we are talking about square inches of soundboard area, and the difference is night and day. Stay away from tiny grands. About 5'5" is the shortest you should normally go.
Maybe the best way to answer your question is this: if I were to begin with 10K in today's market, I am quite certain that I would have relatively little trouble finding a used grand that will have a touch and sound superior to any upright piano, Period.
It took me about a minute to find an example of what I have in mind. Head for this website, and scroll down to the Yamaha G2 grand in the Grand Piano Gallery on this website:
http://rickjonespianos.com/grands.htm There you can watch a video of a 5'8" Yamaha G2 Grand piano, built in 1972, with new hammers, new pinblock, and the famous 10-year Rick Jones warranty, clearance priced at just under 10K. (He has three more G2s that are not on clearance for 11K.) It is probably a "gray market" Yamaha, just like my U-3 was. No upright is going to match that G2 Yamaha grand for sound or touch.
If you are willing to spend just a little more money on an investment that is probably going to take center stage in your living room for the rest of your life--which makes good economic sense--then you can scroll down a bit further and check out the video for that beautiful Cherry 1983 5'10" Kawai KG-2 Grand for about 14K.
Again, scroll down a bit more, and you can rest assured that no upright on earth will have a sound or touch to equal that 6'5" used Yamaha G-5. Watch the video.
If you like beautiful cabinetry, another deal on the Jones page is that 1981 10" KG-2 Kawai in Walnut, clearance priced at 9K. The KG-2 is the predecessor of the RX-2, i.e., it is a lot of piano, one of the better ones that Kawai has built. Moreover, the case has beautiful carvings, which eventually you might be very glad to see on the largest piece of furniture in your home.
I keep on suggesting the Yamahas or Kawais, because, in your price range, they represent proven craftsmanship and quality.
All the above pianos come with 10 year warranties.
I am not a tech or rep, nor am I associated with Rick Jones pianos. If you look through my posts on this website, you will see that I am just a pianist with opinions--someone who has owned many different pianos over the course of over four decades of piano playing.
Of course Rick Jones is just one of many places where you should be able to find comparable deals. If you do not want to travel to New York, or you are uncomfortable with a web purchase, then by all means print up the Rick Jones stats, and bring them with you to your local dealers. Then you should have a pretty good idea how much you can deal for a nice grand.
Here is another website where you can check out the videos for several used Yamaha or Kawai grands within your price range:
http://pianocenter.com/used-yamaha.asp?offset=4 As you have probably guessed by now, used Yamaha or Kawai grands are plentiful in the United States, and many of them represent a great buy for someone with your budget.
Good luck!
