[kreacher]

Hi,

Yes it's true that with inflation and all prices tend to go up, also as time goes by vintage saxes become more vintage and adquire more status and also becomes harder for pristine examples to appear.

But sometimes I'm really at a loss, because I see so many good saxophones struggling to achieve a decent sale value and just today I witnessed a low B to high F old but in very good condition tenor sax sell for 350€. Maybe is it because of falling in the collectors section? It seems a high price, even though the seller says it's low pitch and serviced. It could also be the brand, but not likely, since it's brand is Mogar.

 

[milandro]

We have discussed this in different forms many times before.

There are many things at play.

The market is shrinking and aging.


The amount of new saxophones sold has been falling steadily since the late ’90. Many brands don’t even bother anymore to show up at trade fairs. There hasn’t been an American made saxophone in years and in Europe the two large groups (Selmer and Buffet/Keilwerth have had to restructure many times) , both have now introduced cheapish models to keep up with Yamaha and Yanagisawa. The rest of the production is small and boutique.

At the same time the “ pool” of secondhand and vintage instruments on the market is rising every year. More and more people stop playing (because of old age or change of fashion) and many have died leaving instruments behind. I have bought several times instruments from deceased players. So the amount of players is decreasing while every years you add the new production to the already present old “ pool” . The pool is overflowing now. Of this overflow the low end is almost not sellable.

I see a group of people turned into repairers (!) buying these instruments at the cheap end of the market that few people want since they need work, putting cheap pads in (and not always making sure that the work is done well) and trying to resell them and not really succeeding.



The price of PROFESSIONAL overhauls has been rising:

Once upon a time music instruments (and shoes there are many parallels...) repair was a very humble thing to do for a craftsman, you could go to a repairer and make small repairs for very reasonable amount of money and keep your instrument playing for many years. This is no longer the case (not a criticism to repairers but in my experience this is a fact of life). Recently I have learned of a flute technician charging $250 to dismount , regulate and oil the flute (no pads installed). This is the reason why there are tons of cheap entry level flutes everywhere.
Same thing for the low end of the saxophone market. Even small amount of work costs a lot of money and many shops (at least in the NL) refuse to carry out partial repairs and only perform overhauls. This is cutting into the the lower end very badly.

A large and famous shop in the NL told me that they were seriously thinking of getting rid of most of the low and medium end American horns, because they simply DON'T sell.








Mogar is an Italian very little known brand, it surprises me that it even sold but if you add the cost of an overhaul (minimum of €300 average €500 to a maximum of €800 here

 

[whaler]

I guess there’s more horn flippers than players on here. I like low market value since I play.
The only reason to sell a Selmer is to buy another.
What the heck is a “Mogar” sax? Keyed from low “B”. That sounds like lamp material to me.

 

[JL]

What the heck is a “Mogar” sax? Keyed from low “B”. That sounds like lamp material to me.

I'm wondering the exact same thing!

 

[milandro]

Mogar is an Italian brand of the ones that the most of people here are probably not aware of they sold stencils (see an Orsi stencil in lacquered version below) but may have had their own saxophones too.

the brand still exists (apparently) as a name of a distributor https://www.mogarmusic.it

but they have produced saxophones in the past and we have spoken of a few instruments

https://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?152112-Marque-Deposee-MOGAR-Nr130750
https://forum.saxontheweb.net/showthread.php?173133-Mogar-flute

In Italy ( France, Belgium and Germany) there was a production of “ short range” saxophones (altos and tenors but also some rare baritone and soprano) in Italy these instruments often constituted a B line especially catered for the local town marching band and they went under the name “ ministeriale” (ministry as they fitted specifications se apparently by the ministry of defense (?) for the military band where the full range instrument was not required.

 

[Saxlicker]

I guess there’s more horn flippers than players on here. I like low market value since I play.
The only reason to sell a Selmer is to buy another.

I like this.......

Though I have slimmed down my armoury
I'm guilty of having 4 Tenors, 2 altos, 1 cheap and nasty sop and about 25 mouthpieces.
But it my own sweet shop as things get harder to come by. Any monetary value is at least secondary. I'd actually prefer to be free of profiteering prices and be able to sell a selmer for a selmer without such huge gulfs between lets say a 5 digit and 101,000.
Selling a vintage selmer horn for 2K and upgrading for 2.5K days seem a distant memory. These days its 6K for 10K and I'm out.....

 

[jolind]

I'm wondering how long it will take before foundations will take over as it's the case with ancient violins for example. Some of the old italian models are lent to the players by foundations that own the instruments (value in some cases around 1 million $ for such an instrument). I could imagine that these foundations will pop up in the saxophone world as soon as the prices get higher than let's say 25K $ for a vintage Mark VI or SBA and then rise quickly over time as mystification follows it's own rules.
On the other hand, there are still to many vintage Selmers around that it could still take a while before that happens.
I'll wait and keep my vintage Conns until the price development swaps over to other brands. Could also take some time before that happens...

 

[JL]

I'd actually prefer to be free of profiteering prices and be able to sell a selmer for a selmer without such huge gulfs between lets say a 5 digit and 101,000.
Selling a vintage selmer horn for 2K and upgrading for 2.5K days seem a distant memory. These days its 6K for 10K and I'm out.....

Saxlicker, I highly doubt moving to a 5 digit VI from your '64 VI would be any kind of an upgrade! The 5 digit would be a different horn maybe, but not likely a better one (I don't buy into that 5 digit nonsense), just more expensive. So it would just be a waste of your hard-earned money to make such an exchange.