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I have 5 Chinese horns that I'm thinking about moving on down the road sometime in the near future. The way the prices have risen, I can already make quite a profit on them, in fact much more than if I had invested in gold or silver. It leaves me to wonder if I can make even more if I keep them a little longer. Hmm... Maybe along with gold and silver spot, there should be a column for CT (chinese tuba) spot prices?

Sad but true enough that your post is only partly tongue in cheek.

I just decided I want to sell my Sterling compensating euphonium, and probably I can't even give it away because it's not one of those new Chinese ones.

It's true.. I recently sold my several years old Packer 274 to a student for the price I paid for it, just because she needed a good instrument. If I had wanted to I could have sold it for even more.

My Packer 333 bass trombone sells for twice what I paid for it brand new.

And yes, the bargain/quality ratio does hurt the resale value of the non chinese horns. Buy a Besson and try to sell it used 6 months down the line. You'll be crying

The apparent profit to be gained by selling an older Chinese horn is 100% abberation. First because when you bought the horn 4 years ago they were a great bargain, and now the prices have risen to the point where they aren't such a great bargain anymore. And second, due to inflation, getting the same number of dollars as you paid for it isn't the landfall it looks like.

If you buy a Chinese horn today and sell it 4 years from now, it will probably have a more similar depreciation as all the other instruments. Until Mexico or Honduras starts making brass instruments then it will start all over again.

bone-a-phone wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2024 11:01 am And second, due to inflation, getting the same number of dollars as you paid for it isn't the landfall it looks like.

Well, I'm selling one in the next few days for the $ I have in four of them, so three will be pure profit. Even adjusted for inflation, that's pretty good, considering the 2% interest I would have made on the money I spent had I kept it in a CD.

Chinesium > gold > silver

I think these break-even/profit things depends a lot on from whom someone purchased a JP thing and from whom someone purchased a Jinbao thing. Not everyone may know who sells JP for the lowest prices, but I think a lot of people know who sells Jinbao for the highest prices.

Also, anyone who thinks they actually made an actual "profit" - after spending $1,000 in 2020, and then selling that thing used for only $1200 in 2024 - is pretty silly.

If anyone doesn't get what I'm trying to explain, almost everything costs twice as much now as the cost then. To be even more clear, USD's (aside from any nonsense single-digit inflation amounts claimed by ruling class-controlled media) are now worth half as much...

... and okay: Chinese horn prices haven't increased by as much as 100% (mostly super-increased shipping costs and 10% tariff) but the prices of most everything else has... and again: those who bought Chinese instruments from the highest priced retailers are not going to be able to come out, unless they find remarkably naive buyers.

Dents Be Gone! wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2024 2:05 pm With the greatest respect for all, I think if I owned some Chinese instruments and thought I could sell them at a profit right now, I wouldn’t drag my feet.

Well, one I actually use. I leave it at the school we have community band at so I don't have to carry a horn back and forth. A second one is my only F, that I started out absolutely hating, but only mildly hate now. If I sell it, I will not replace it.

I assume this includes Yamaha and Besson Chinese...

Since I didn't make that lucky aberrant investment, will I be able to sell my 40 year old Miraphone? Or will people just ignore it as they look for recent Chinese stuff?

jtm wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2024 7:33 pm Since I didn't make that lucky aberrant investment, will I be able to sell my 40 year old Miraphone? Or will people just ignore it as they look for recent Chinese stuff?

I don't think you will have a problem selling that!

bloke wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2024 7:20 pm I assume this includes Yamaha and Besson Chinese...

I don't think anyone will make anything reselling say, an Eastman. I guess most companies sell a Chinese line now, huh?

Brand cachet is an interesting art. It's a combination of hype, actual quality, marketplace reaction to hype, and frequency of hype. The obvious winner of this game in this industry is Yamaha. Miraphone almost doesn't engage in it - other than going to shows. I'm pretty sure that the largest slice of pie - in the ingredients I mentioned above - with Miraphone - is quality. Not every model they've brought to market has been a winner in my view, but they've all been put together remarkably well. and people weigh various aspects having to do with instruments in different proportions than do I.

Back when Yamaha first started being hyped by band directors - yet used ones weren't going for much (decades ago), we shrugged our shoulders and picked up as many of them as we could find (cheap) to rent out. We didn't think much about this - once we sold our brick and mortar and got away from the robbery and shooting zone that was forming back over yonder, but recently we dug around upstairs and found that we had dozens of them, and have been selling off the Japanese 23s to several band directors, now that renting has become so expensive that parents are shrugging their shoulders and doing nothing - when the full-retail music stores come into their band rooms and set up shop. I think we've sold down to about six of them. The last one Mrs. bloke pulled: I had to unsmash the bottom bow (no evidence), and - with all of them - I'm doing partial refinish jobs on. They're able to be made to look good - since the lacquer is epoxy - with only partial refinishing. Of course only having to polish the nickel plated keys with white buff also makes it easy, and some of their sets of keys look good enough to where they can just be shined up with a nickel polishing cloth by hand. Nickel polishing cloths are sort of amazing, if you can find them. Anyway, I think we're down to five or six of them, and a couple of them are 21s. We discovered that I refinished the body on a 21 decades ago and stuck it back in the case without Mrs bloke repadding it, so we'll probably sell that one for more. (There are some people who view model 21s as magical, just as there are people who view anything that isn't made any more as sort of magical.) We shipped off another 23 yesterday to one of those schools that's up in the Atlantic Seaboard area.
The saxophone playing band directors don't seem very impressed with the new Chinese made model 26s. I buy some really short little octave mechanism posts from Yamaha for the 26 model, which I use for tuba slide stop rods. (I'm not much of a fan of the Meinl-Weston leather strap system.)

Way more interesting than this, I think - before lunch - I'll have that 186 playing - which I've been putting together from miscellaneous 186 parts scrounged from boxes in the attic. It has a crap unredeemable 186 bell on it for now (with a nice bell waiting in the wings), because I was going to loan it to a kid who has a tryout this weekend, and it was looking like the jp379b - that his parents purchased - wasn't going to arrive in time, but that instrument is actually now on a truck headed this way, so it could go one way or the other. The kid has a four valve tuba to audition with, but it's a scrawny little thing, and the sound of a 186 might bump him up a chair or two, yes? There's a thread in the repair forum, so those of you who like to look at crap could check there a little later

I actually have three or four pretty cool old small bore professional trombones that I really need to fix up and get sold, because I'm tired of them being around here and not being turned into money. Probably most players around today don't even know of these models. There's and all gold brass and nickel Olds Super with good slide tubes, another all gold brass and nickel Holton instrument called Stratodyne, there's a Conn (rimless Vocabell, there's another Conn which is a student model but professionals loved them, and I think there's a Conn 5H up there. The copper Conn is basically a small bore Director with a copper bell. Those make such a beautiful sound...

Every time I start mentioning lists of crap in the attic, it's a mistake because people start pm-ing me about specific ones. [1] I'm not going to get these fixed up for sale until I do, [2] I've got quite a few things ahead of them, [3] I don't sell anything as is, and [4] for anyone who might be interested in one of them, by the time I get these done, you will have found something else.

Shop aprons are buffing wheel bait, which is why smocks are safer.

jtm wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2024 7:33 pm Since I didn't make that lucky aberrant investment, will I be able to sell my 40 year old Miraphone? Or will people just ignore it as they look for recent Chinese stuff?

Uh, if you still have the bag that came with the horn it would sell pretty quick :-D It would sell quickly anyway.