https://libertymusic.us/

 

I was going to mention Liberty.

Also Dillon music

https://www.dillonmusic.com/

 

https://www.usahorn.net/

 

+1 USA Horn is very good.

 

KB Saxophone Services - Kim Bock

 

All of those are great suggestions.

 

Yes, and shop around since you have choices.

Some may charge a larger percentage for selling it.

 

Hi guys, thanks for the Liberty mentions! I would be happy to help her out selling the horns, we do a lot of consignment sales here.

 

Check out the Dealer Directory USA area of the forum. There are quite a number of good techs and shops listed. Be sure to uncollapse the view of sub forum listings at the lower right of the page to view all entries.

 

This is the 2nd request like this I got in the the past month. I'm starting to detect a trend. Mmm....

For some time, I've been predicting that the vintage sax market will soon become glutted and devalued as boomers begin to, er, "downsize," and attics are cleaned out. It will begin with C-mels, True Tones and Chus, then a stream of 6Ms, 10Ms, Zephyrs and TH&Cs will follow, and finally a flood of Super 20s, Coufs and Gold Medals. The supply of Yamahas will remain constant, however.

 

I should pick up a C melody when that happens.

 

JL Woodwinds. www.jlwoodwindrepair.com

 

I hope you're right, Keith and Phil. If so, my own vintage horns may retain some value yet, by the law of supply and demand. If not, at least we can look forward to lots more cheap vintage horns.

 

Well nobody really knows for sure- my crystal ball is only marginally accurate If you have a few vintage horns you like playing then continue to enjoy them and don't worry about it. I wouldn't be concerned unless you've bought 20 old horns with the idea that they are some sort of investment. What seems to be driving the prices these days is more the decrease in demand as opposed to an increase in supply, at least of vintage horns. Fewer people playing instruments and those that are, are shopping with their eyes instead of their ears. There are a lot of pretty good horns out there that can be had for very reasonable prices if you know what you're looking at. The real issue is the Asian factories are pumping out cheap horns that cost less than the overhauls that most of these 50-70 year old horns now need whether they've been played a bunch or not. It's sort of a Catch-22; the horns are not very desirable unless they are in good playing condition but few are willing to pay the money to put them into good playing condition unless their is more demand making them worth more to begin with.

 

Thanks guys for all your input! I will pass this stuff on.

FYI, she took the horns to Mark at USA Horns last week. She knows this will be a process, and is expecting to have to go to a few different shops before she makes a final decision.
===============================================================================

As for the future of the vintage horn market.... Personally, I don't worry about it, since I don't buy horns as investments. I buy my horns to play. There are lots of good deals out there if you know where to look, and if you're patient.

As for the cheap, Asian horns available for less than an overhaul, in all seriousness, I'm not sure they factor in to the equation. It's like comparing apples to oranges.

The fact is, vintage horns are not really a good choice for beginning students anyways. As much as I love my vintage horns, I recognize that my students are better served by learning the fundamentals on a modern horn.

However, after a couple of years of playing the cheap junk being passed off as student horns today--if the student hasn't quit by then out of sheer frustration, which is why we as instructors owe it to our students to help them pick as decent a horn as possible out of today's crappy offerings--then the student is ready for an upgrade. At that point, a vintage pro horn could be a viable option for them if it is in decent condition.

Even factoring in an overhaul, or a re-padding, it will likely still be less than a new "intermediate model" that can be just as sketchy as the student models. Again, this is where as instructors, we should be helping our students find and pick out a horn.

That said, there are lots of vintage horns that will likely fall into disuse, and potentially get re-purposed or recycled as younger players fall into the trap thinking that newer means it's always better.

Now to totally derail my own thready completely, here's a link to an article I recently wrote us not being the owners, but more the caretakers of great saxophones.

This article follows my thinking above to its natural conclusion.

Thanks for entertaining my stream of conscious writing. Hey, at least I only hijacked my own thread. :mrgreen:

 

A little off topic, but the vintage horn market is kind of like the vintage car market. People saw the prices escalating, so a lot of people bought them to resell. People willing paid more than they were worth, knowing they could sell it for even more in a year or so. Eventually, no one was buying at the high prices, except for the ones in the best condition. I bought my son a nice Selmer Mark VI for about $5000 in 2010. Look what people are asking for them now. I saw a SBA on the bay for $22,000 a while back, Mark VIs for $11-13,000. I've wanted to get him a Buescher TH&C, but they've exploded in price lately too. I think there's a lot of horns sitting on the bay now that just sit there because the seller can't afford to sell it for what it's worth, because he overpaid for it thinking it would (or needing it to) appreciate.