Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum Need Advice About Selling a Piano, Time flies...!

Hello everyone!

I guess I am a re-newbie here. I looked back through my posts, and after months of digging around, and a ton of great advice from everyone here, on January 13, 2007 I purchased a Nordiska 5'5" Model G. It was a great choice and I am still grateful to members here at Piano World for their assistance.

The piano was for my daughter who was only 11 years old at the time. We had split the cost of the piano back then with her grandmother who passed away in 2010. My little girl grew up and went through elementary and middle school, and spent 4 years in Performing Arts High Schools - getting up at 4:30 AM to commute. A year ago my wife was transferred to LA from the Bay Area, and the kids and myself, now retired, moved south. My daughter was in the summer between her Junior and Senior year, and was very fortunate to be accepted into Los Angeles School of the Arts vocal program as a Senior. She worked very hard through High School and while her crazy schedule prevented her from becoming the concert level pianist we had hoped (LOL), with our emphasis on education, she made her own choices and commitments all along the way, and was a successful student. She loved that piano shaking the house, and can actually compose music by ear on the piano, so I'm not complaining.

Time flies! So on to the present.

After four years of Performing Arts schools, she wanted to go to a "regular" college, and stay at home so attends Cal State LA as a freshman. And she has the dream and wants to be a star, so loves LA. Her life is busy now with her school and her first job, and she loves her music and won't stop singing. I'm sure many of you know what this is like! (Not much peace and quiet) And she is actually recording! And she sounds great. No matter her future, we are very proud!

And the Nordiska? When we moved to LA, we knew we wanted a smaller place, and to be near the ocean. (I watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean every night, so can't complain) We planned on going smaller, but with the cost of homes here near the beach about 6-10 times the cost where we lived, we had to go smaller, but waited to decide on the piano. We kept the piano in a crate at first, then had it assembled, covered it, and put in a storage unit clear of anything else.

My daughter has an 88-key Korg M-50 in her room that she uses, and we don't have room for the Piano, so decided to sell it. We absolutely don't want to do Craigslist or sell it in any way where we need to run back and forth to our storage to meet complete strangers, or have them come here. I am assuming our best choice is to consign it to a dealer. If the economics are good and the Piano no longer has a decent value, we would consider donating it. (We already know where-so no begging!)

We are not in a huge rush, but are paying almost $400 a month for the storage, so the sooner the better. If anyone has any advice about what we should do, please chime in. I am as clueless about this as I was about buying the Piano back in 2007, so I welcome and appreciate your input.

Any thought to donate it to a charity (tax deduction) and save 400 a month on storage?

I took a break from pianos until a couple years ago so a lot of the newer names are unfamiliar to me. I have heard a tiny bit about Nordiska's here, but looks like Dongbei quit using that brand. It seems like it was a pretty good/decent quality piano, but with the unfamiliar brand and limited stuff on the web, you're probably going to take a pretty bad hit.

And remember, most people don't buy pianos that often so first timers will probably only know Steinway and Yamaha (I've met people recently that never heard of Kawai, -_-), or they're getting back into it like me so they missed all the new brands, but you might get lucky and find someone who does know Nordiska or is qualified to appreciate the piano.

Where's the piano, SF or LA?

Have you looked into consigning it with a piano store?

AFAIK, there is no product coming out of the Dongbei factory since the Henry J debacle.
There are a few NOS grands floating around in the 165 size, asking price of about $8K.

For your piano, assuming it's in good shape, I'm thinking around $4500. A donation could probably be written for more.

Perhaps one of the dealers can chip in and correct me.

How about calling an auction company?

Thanks for the advice and sorry for the slow reply. We are most seriously considering a donation, and have a couple of worthy recipients in mind. We also realize that if we were to buy our now College freshman daughter a piano (if we had the room) we would spend considerably more than we did for the Nordiska as both her skills and our finances have come a long way in all these years. So off with the Nordiska, regardless.

I am curious about the "henry J debacle" mentiond in one reply, since I have no knowledge or context about it. Does someone have info or a link to fill me in? Thanks.

If you put the $400 per month into a larger place for your daughter, could she take it? If you could keep the piano until it is trade-in time, that might be the best bet.

The IRS has tightened the rules for donations (other than cash or publicly traded securities) if you donate something worth over $500. So if you donate it, you will need a professional appraisal by someone who can sign Form 8283, attesting that they are aware of, and can be held liable for the significant penalties for over-appraisals. You will also be liable for a false appraisal.

I'm no accountant but I believe that it would be considered an itemized deduction and would reduce your taxable income. So if you were in a 33% tax bracket, a piano appraised at say $6000 would only save you $2000.

That is the case. Most people are in even a smaller bracket, so the amount you could save would be even less, and the cost of the appraisal would reduce that even more.

Try contacting a technician
Some of these guys deal too, and they are usually pretty well connected.
You'll owe him a fee, of course.