You see an ad for a guitar on Facebook marketplace or similar.
The guitar is filthy, the strings are rusty or some are missing, it has stickers on it, et cetera.
TAKE THE FUCKING STICKERS OFF.
CLEAN IT.
PUT SOME NEW STRINGS ON IT BEFORE SELLING IT.
Seriously. How FUCKING LAZY do you need to be that you can’t be arsed to make an effort to convince people to buy what you are selling for the price you’re asking for?!
It bothers me to no end when you see absolute dopes trying to sell something whilst simultaneously demonstrating they give zero fucks about the thing they are trying to sell.
Stop being a lazy c***. Present it properly and show prospective buyers you at least tried to care for it for fucks sake…
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"Nothing annoys me more than this…"
It was her son's guitar. He loved that guitar and she has many memories of him studying, learning and practising. He used to play some of her favourite songs on it. She remembers he collected a few stickers, and remembers him putting them on the guitar, each one related to an event that meant something to him at the time. That guitar was his most treasured possession.
He left the guitar at home when he went off to University, for safe-keeping as much as anything. Unfortunately he never came home again, and never will. But the parents kept the guitar as it had so many happy memories associated with it.
His father never really recovered from the shock and the loss. He lost his job and, although she tried to keep everything together, they ended up losing the house and the next one, and the one after that. Moving from one short-term rental to another, they took the guitar with them each time, but it picked up the odd dent and scratch, a string or two broke and it started to look its age.
When the father finally succumbed, and she moved again, into the cold, damp, bedsit, she still took the guitar with her, and used to sit in the dark evenings, just holding it and remembering for her last days.
A distant relative is now clearing those last possessions, hoping to raise enough cash to cover the funeral bill. They don't know much - anything - about guitars or the memories associated with this one. To them, it's just another "thing" to get rid of.
So, stick a quick ad on marketplace and see if anyone can take it away. Sure it looks a bit tatty, old and unloved, but they know enough to realise that trying to fix it up might damage it more.
So, a '59 Les Paul for £250 seems like a decent enough deal, even if it does need £9.99 spending on it for a new set of strings.
People who inflict their ill disciplined children on everyone else in restaurants or god forbid -pubs.
Fruit flies ... the little bastards invade your house and try and reenact a biblical plague ...
Lack of public toilets in London ... or pretty much anywhere these days (are we supposed to have evolvolved beyond needing a dump?)
People fly-tipping ... especially random jizzy matrasses left blocking pavements ...
The stupid amount of packaging on pretty much every shaving product ... especially that blister pack plastic that is sharper than glass when torn, cuts you nearly to the bone ... and is probably better to shave with than the over priced, multi bladed product contained in it.
People who talk loudly on their mobiles in Post Office queues ... summary execution is too good for them.
Shitty couriers (see my other thread)
Door to door charity collectors running a 'don't dare interrupt me' script.
Grown arsed people riding bycicles on pavements ... or worse e-scooters.
The rash of betting shops like Paddy Powers that infect our towns like 'High Street Gonorrhoea'
I could go on
Formerly TheGuitarWeasel ... Oil City Pickups ... Oil City Blog 7 String.org profile and message
I concur with those who take haggler's viewpoint. Grot, grime, gunk, rust, stickers or absent/unusable strings = discount.
When I first read the Discussion title, I thought it was somebody slagging off Roxy Music. "Nothing annoys me more than More Than This."
I think the issue, for private sellers, is that some don't realise a) how bad their presentation is and b) how much better it could be to play once tidied up - I see customer come in the shop with one string broken and wanting me to replace that one string - the other strings are so shitty and dirty they will be snapping shortly anyway - But the whole guitar is so dirty I feel like showing it down first with some disinfectant
Quick story - About 40 years ago I fancied a Golf GTi - Saw one on the dealer's forecourt on the way home every night - So this one Friday night I left work early to have a look at it - Looking at it and was approached by the usual 'walking smart suit' - Asked a few questions then asked about a test drive - Not an option he said as it has a flat tyre - So why present it on the forecourt, for sale, with the usual price sign on the window, when it is not 'retail ready' - he asked me to come back on Monday - I did, to tell him I'd brought another GTi elsewhere
Somebody should point out that it's the low "E" string you take off to do Keef impressions.