Best trade in

HAL9000

Not a trade but I did sell a Shergold Masquerader to a local music shop for £150 maybe thirty years ago. The shop eventually managed to move it on for about a ton! TBH I can’t remember what I’d paid for it but I seem to recall it was £150 - £175 ish.

Panama_Jack666

gazrichards said:

I’ll add a tale I heard when working in guitar shops many moons ago. 

Old lady brings guitar case into the store. Shows it to owner of shop and says it was her late husbands. He had it, never played it and she wanted rid of it. 

Inside was a pristine 50s or 60s strat 

It had the original purchase receipt showing £60 and she said she had  heard that old guitars held their value well so if she got the £60 back she would be happy!!!
dude haggles her down to £55 

Dude sounds like a knob head.

DB1

I bought a D'Angelico acoustic a few months ago - GG were knocking them out for £199 I think (they were normally £399). I thought I couldn't really go wrong at that price. Anyway, I didn't like it. I called into a well-known dealers and said that I couldn't be bothered to sell it, and asked what they'd give me for it. I was expecting maybe £100.

They said 'list price' is now £399, it's nearly new, we'll sell it at £299, so we'll give you £200'.

YES! FLIPPER!!!!

I made £1 profit, which is a rarity. Then I realised that I'd put new strings on, so I lost £7.

That felt a lot more like it.

jonnyburgo

gazrichards said:

I’ll add a tale I heard when working in guitar shops many moons ago. 

Old lady brings guitar case into the store. Shows it to owner of shop and says it was her late husbands. He had it, never played it and she wanted rid of it. 

Inside was a pristine 50s or 60s strat 

It had the original purchase receipt showing £60 and she said she had  heard that old guitars held their value well so if she got the £60 back she would be happy!!!
dude haggles her down to £55 

That's terrible if true.

Cranky

DB1 said:

I bought a D'Angelico acoustic a few months ago - GG were knocking them out for £199 I think (they were normally £399). I thought I couldn't really go wrong at that price. Anyway, I didn't like it. I called into a well-known dealers and said that I couldn't be bothered to sell it, and asked what they'd give me for it. I was expecting maybe £100.

They said 'list price' is now £399, it's nearly new, we'll sell it at £299, so we'll give you £200'.

YES! FLIPPER!!!!

I made £1 profit, which is a rarity. Then I realised that I'd put new strings on, so I lost £7.

That felt a lot more like it.

This is my game right here.  Lol

I have a similar D'Angelico experience, with one of those new, overpriced Deluxe SS semihollows they're making in Korea.  Retail was $1999 USD, got it for $549 or something like that thinking I'd either like it and enjoy the deal or not like it and flip it.  It was a pretty guitar but I didn't like it, within days traded a guy for a PRS S2 Starla straight up.  After a few months I was over the PRS, so parlayed it into a Tele and a Jag.  

Now I like the Jag so much I'm looking to trade the Tele and Jag in for a proper American Jag.

Keefy

dazzajl said:

My best trade will always be the Mexi Strat I bought brand new in Andertons and handed straight over to a stranger in the pub next door for his Duesenberg Caribou. 

I remember that tale. I’ve also had lunch in that pub. But I have yet to see that Duesy...

Not a great time for meet-ups at the mo though!

Teyeplayer

gazrichards said:

I’ll add a tale I heard when working in guitar shops many moons ago. 

Old lady brings guitar case into the store. Shows it to owner of shop and says it was her late husbands. He had it, never played it and she wanted rid of it. 

Inside was a pristine 50s or 60s strat 

It had the original purchase receipt showing £60 and she said she had  heard that old guitars held their value well so if she got the £60 back she would be happy!!!
dude haggles her down to £55 

Certainly not something to be proud of or boast about; what a disgusting thing to do. 

tone1

I traded a Cornford Carrera plus a few hundred quid for a Gecko green Gibson Les Paul Standard...which seemed a pretty good deal....

DefaultM

Went in Cash Converters and they had a 6 string fretless Mayones bass for £280. The guy behind the counter thought I'd bought a right piece of shit and started boasting that he had a Music Man Stingray. I pretended to be impressed and left as fast as I could with my piece of shit. 

I couldn't get along with it so I straight swapped it for a brand new Music Man Stingray 5 that I've still got.

Fiftyshadesofjay

gazrichards said:

I’ll add a tale I heard when working in guitar shops many moons ago. 

Old lady brings guitar case into the store. Shows it to owner of shop and says it was her late husbands. He had it, never played it and she wanted rid of it. 

Inside was a pristine 50s or 60s strat 

It had the original purchase receipt showing £60 and she said she had  heard that old guitars held their value well so if she got the £60 back she would be happy!!!
dude haggles her down to £55 

Hard to see how mugging an old widow qualifies as a “best trade in”

SPECTRUM001

When I worked in a secondhand record shop, it was absolutely the protocol to inform sellers if they had a valuable or collectable item.

We really enjoyed being able to tell a punter that their X-ray Spex LP was a thirty quidder - rather than surreptitiously ripping them off...

daveyh

I bought a Kramer Pacer in a blowout sale when they went bust in ‘92. It was a pittance, about a quarter what they normally went for. I went straight round to a big local dealer and traded it for a Les Paul and twenty quid or so. Had that Lester about 15years.

gazrichards

Fiftyshadesofjay said:

gazrichards said:

I’ll add a tale I heard when working in guitar shops many moons ago. 

Old lady brings guitar case into the store. Shows it to owner of shop and says it was her late husbands. He had it, never played it and she wanted rid of it. 

Inside was a pristine 50s or 60s strat 

It had the original purchase receipt showing £60 and she said she had  heard that old guitars held their value well so if she got the £60 back she would be happy!!!
dude haggles her down to £55 

Hard to see how mugging an old widow qualifies as a “best trade in”

A 5 grand guitar for £55 - that’s quite a good bit of business for him and by all accounts the old lady left happy and probably enjoyed a fish supper and g&t on her spoils. 

Also, this wasn’t me. The story was told to me by a visiting rep as something another shop was boasting about. Pre internet days so the news couldn’t really spread to the public and unleash a fest of shame towards him. 

dazzajl

SPECTRUM001 said:

When I worked in a secondhand record shop, it was absolutely the protocol to inform sellers if they had a valuable or collectable item.

We really enjoyed being able to tell a punter that their X-ray Spex LP was a thirty quidder - rather than surreptitiously ripping them off...

As a snapper I often get asked the question ‘do you know much about cameras?’ About ten years back now a properly lovely old gent I was getting some house sale shots for tips his uncles old camera gear out onto the table and asks me if this old stuff is still worth anything, or if he should just bin it now it won’t get used again. 

My first job out of school was in a vintage camera dealer and what he had was one of the finest pre war Leica collections I’ve ever seen. The look on his face when I told him he needs to get in touch with an auction house and he could expect a sale well in excess of £30k still makes me smile. 

munckee

gazrichards said:

Fiftyshadesofjay said:

gazrichards said:

I’ll add a tale I heard when working in guitar shops many moons ago. 

Old lady brings guitar case into the store. Shows it to owner of shop and says it was her late husbands. He had it, never played it and she wanted rid of it. 

Inside was a pristine 50s or 60s strat 

It had the original purchase receipt showing £60 and she said she had  heard that old guitars held their value well so if she got the £60 back she would be happy!!!
dude haggles her down to £55 

Hard to see how mugging an old widow qualifies as a “best trade in”

A 5 grand guitar for £55 - that’s quite a good bit of business for him and by all accounts the old lady left happy and probably enjoyed a fish supper and g&l on her spoils. 

Also, this wasn’t me. The story was told to me by a visiting rep as something another shop was boasting about. Pre internet days so the news couldn’t really spread to the public and unleash a fest of shame towards him. 

I couldn’t call that good business. There is no such thing as ‘just’ business. If someone conducts business with no integrity it’s because they lack integrity. 

That’s scumbag behavior in my book. 

gazrichards

munckee said:

gazrichards said:

Fiftyshadesofjay said:

gazrichards said:

I’ll add a tale I heard when working in guitar shops many moons ago. 

Old lady brings guitar case into the store. Shows it to owner of shop and says it was her late husbands. He had it, never played it and she wanted rid of it. 

Inside was a pristine 50s or 60s strat 

It had the original purchase receipt showing £60 and she said she had  heard that old guitars held their value well so if she got the £60 back she would be happy!!!
dude haggles her down to £55 

Hard to see how mugging an old widow qualifies as a “best trade in”

A 5 grand guitar for £55 - that’s quite a good bit of business for him and by all accounts the old lady left happy and probably enjoyed a fish supper and g&l on her spoils. 

Also, this wasn’t me. The story was told to me by a visiting rep as something another shop was boasting about. Pre internet days so the news couldn’t really spread to the public and unleash a fest of shame towards him. 

I couldn’t call that good business. There is no such thing as ‘just’ business. If someone conducts business with no integrity it’s because they lack integrity. 

That’s scumbag behavior in my book. 

I’m on the fence with it if I’m honest. 

You take something into a guitar shop you expect them to profit on it after you sell them it. And to tell them how much you want for it and expect them to go higher is pretty daft. 

But....knocking her down in price or even just giving the asking price was unfair. He could have given her £500 and she would have left on cloud 9 and given him plenty of profit left in it. 

gazrichards

Another good one was one morning I arrived in the shop to see my colleague unpacking a load of gear that we got in on consignment as commission sale (not really a thing now with eBay etc). 

One thing was a bizarre studio compressor I’d never seen and also an old burns left handed hank Marvin signature. Both of these things were super rare but the market for them was so small. 

Bizarrely, that afternoon we got a phone call from Japan and it was a guy that was buying something else off us. 

We got chatting to him and it turns out he ran a studio in Japan and he played bass in a shadows tribute (a Japanese shadows tribute) I mentioned we had this hank Marvin guitar but it was left handed. Didn’t matter, he said. His guitar player could play left and right handed!!!!!
sold him the guitar and somehow the compressor too. Did about £3k of business in an hour on some gear I thought would be on the wall for years waiting for the right (or left) buyer!!!

skullfunkerry

I swapped a Charvel Pro Mod San Dimas Style 2 (Tele shape) for a GJ2 Shredder... I think money wise they were worth about the same, but the GJ2 felt like a much better guitar. It’s another one that I miss, tbh

Logie

A 2004 USA Fender Strat Deluxe I paid £600 for traded for a mint with all the case candy Ibanez JEM 7VV. Answered an ad on Gumtree for somebody wanting to trade the JEM for a Strat and I thought I'd give it a go. He said yes after I sent him the pics and we met in Reading train station to do the deal. Couldn't believe it when he opened the case. Absolutely spanking new but turns out he was american, had bought it over there before coming out and decided he wanted a Strat instead and just wanted an easy trade. Sold it eventually for £1100 when the realisation hit me that I was no Steve Vai! I got done £30 for going the wrong way up a bus lane outside the station

boogieman

dazzajl said:

SPECTRUM001 said:

When I worked in a secondhand record shop, it was absolutely the protocol to inform sellers if they had a valuable or collectable item.

We really enjoyed being able to tell a punter that their X-ray Spex LP was a thirty quidder - rather than surreptitiously ripping them off...

As a snapper I often get asked the question ‘do you know much about cameras?’ About ten years back now a properly lovely old gent I was getting some house sale shots for tips his uncles old camera gear out onto the table and asks me if this old stuff is still worth anything, or if he should just bin it now it won’t get used again. 

My first job out of school was in a vintage camera dealer and what he had was one of the finest pre war Leica collections I’ve ever seen. The look on his face when I told him he needs to get in touch with an auction house and he could expect a sale well in excess of £30k still makes me smile. 

My dad had to clear out his uncle’s house when the old guy had to go into a care home. Dad sold a custom fitted case, containing a vintage Leica rangefinder camera, several lenses and various accessories, to a dealer for the grand total of........£500. He was immensely proud. I nearly burst into tears when he told me.