Back when we rented out about 1500 instruments (with only a couple of part-time employees), we started grabbing up a bunch of Yamaha altos to rent out (because many band directors started becoming yamabots), so we played along, gathered up a bunch of them, fixed them up, and rented them out (for a yamasurcharge).
We sort of forgot that we had that big stack of Yamaha altos, stumbled across them recently, and ran a little ad. Three or four schools (including local, regional, and quite a ways away) gobbled up a bunch of them - where there are a bunch of kids that can't afford to spend a hundred and something a month to rent any sort of whatever-brand alto.
The first few were easy, because they were pretty and most of the pads were pretty good, but the farther down we've gotten into the stack, the more challenging it has become to deliver a good product - when some school orders a few more of them or another school orders some of them. I think we're down to the last five or six or something like that... and a couple of them are probably really old model 21s. I chuckle when some yamabot gets really excited about 21s or even 23s, just because they're not made anymore and they are Yamaha, but they are welcome to them. I believe they also perceive that they are special because they were made in Japan instead of China - as are the 26s.
The one that we are probably going to ship off in a day or two (after Mrs. bloke completely repads this one) featured a badly smashed in bottom including the bell-side tone hole, of course some pretty juicy bell dents, some other miscellaneous damage, and a really ugly finish.
Dent removal was what it was, but for quite a few years we've had strategies that we developed whereby we could partially refinish instruments to make them look really respectable without doing a complete lacquer strip and complete refinish - which would include pulling all the springs and all that mess. I'll stick up a couple pictures after this one's done and before we pack it up.
Again, they're getting more and more difficult to make look nice without completely relacquerng them, and this one was sort of difficult - but still didn't take all that much time.. well because I've done an awful lot of this kind of mess.