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Auction, 9Th March, Glasgow. Wheatstone No 29413.


Anglogeezer

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Multiply the estimate by 5 and you're probably about there. The low estimate will no doubt draw in a good number of punters, most of whom are going to be disappointed (including myself). :(

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Well I did go along and have a look today. Also had some time to try it out for a while. It's been tuned down to concert pitch at some time in the past, but some of the reeds are seriously out of tune. The bellows seem to be pretty air tight. Could do with the usual service as it does cough quite a lot on some of the buttons, but is not a bad player. The case has a label with the name 'A G Hutton'. Despite the estimate, a representative from the auction house advised that they expect it to fetch £2,000 - £3,000. They know that they are selling a nice tenor treble.

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These are sad times, the British economy is in savage decline and yet this instrument sold for £2,600 plus 20% buyers premium. I doubt that our economy will recover sufficiently in my lifetime for me to own and play a vintage baritone concertina. :(

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plus 20% buyers premium.

Never fails to irritate this concept. If they are taking money off the buyer surely it could be argued they are offering a service for it? I wish a few buyers would sue them for failing to look after their interests when they buy something that's not fairly described.

 

It's some marketing man somewhere's "clever" trick to camouflaging a huge commission rate (no wonder everyone ends up in the arms of Ebay.) It still comes out of the seller's pocket. Or do some sellers really believe that buyers will pay the full value of the thing and then happily pay another 20% over that for the privelege of so doing? I've no doubt the odd clown does but I doubt there are enough of them to count on.

 

Incidentally the big duets are also nudging the £3000 mark these days; they are clearly less of a bargain than they used to be. So I can't even suggest you dump that old Ec and get one of them instead Pete! (Although one instrument would do the job of two of course....)

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plus 20% buyers premium.

Never fails to irritate this concept. If they are taking money off the buyer surely it could be argued they are offering a service for it? I wish a few buyers would sue them for failing to look after their interests when they buy something that's not fairly described.

 

It's some marketing man somewhere's "clever" trick to camouflaging a huge commission rate (no wonder everyone ends up in the arms of Ebay.) It still comes out of the seller's pocket. Or do some sellers really believe that buyers will pay the full value of the thing and then happily pay another 20% over that for the privelege of so doing? I've no doubt the odd clown does but I doubt there are enough of them to count on.

 

Incidentally the big duets are also nudging the £3000 mark these days; they are clearly less of a bargain than they used to be. So I can't even suggest you dump that old Ec and get one of them instead Pete! (Although one instrument would do the job of two of course....)

One instrument very rarely does the job of two Dirge, as we well know but a Tennor Treble EC (as in this case) is an 'all rounder' English if ever there is one.

Buyers know about the Auction house premium and should allow for that when deciding how much they are prepared to spend.

 

This finnish price however is quite high, considering that Rikki tells us it needs an amount of restoration.

 

 

As to the price; well, when I think back to my first Tennor Treble which cost me 7 week's wages.... I do not think that prices are getting too high.... but that we all have too much other stuff (houses, cars,computers, clothes etc etc ) and we are used to purchasing things cheaply that are now made by machines which would definately be unaffordable if they were hand made or produced by the antiquated methods used by the old Brittish industries of the past.

What did Alexander Prince (or was it Horni) tell a gathering of Duet players, back in the '20's according to Tommy Williams, something like " You men will be too old by the time you can afford a decent Duet to be able to become good at playing it".

 

Things have changed it is true but I don't see £3000 odd as being a crazy price .

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As to the price; well, when I think back to my first Tennor Treble which cost me 7 week's wages.... I do not think that prices are getting too high.... but that we all have too much other stuff (houses, cars,computers, clothes etc etc ) and we are used to purchasing things cheaply that are now made by machines which would definately be unaffordable if they were hand made or produced by the antiquated methods used by the old Brittish industries of the past.

 

Things have changed it is true but I don't see £3000 odd as being a crazy price .

 

My observation over the last year is that one can get a more than decent treble EC for much less than I did in 2011. Look at Chris Algar's which fail to sell quite often...

 

The high but not crazy prices may very well be limited to ECs from TT upwards (wished I could afford one or even better a BT myself!) and the bigger duets.

 

Well, I'll have to stick to the Treble EC and find this challenging in its own way. B)

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What did Alexander Prince (or was it Horni) tell a gathering of Duet players, back in the '20's according to Tommy Williams, something like " You men will be too old by the time you can afford a decent Duet to be able to become good at playing it".

 

Things have changed it is true but I don't see £3000 odd as being a crazy price .

 

High quality concertinas are pretty cheap in comparison to high quality editions of most other instruments. Most professional musicians are going to have to find far more than £3000 to buy an acceptable version of their instrument for public performance. You can spend a lot, lot more than that just on a violin bow, let alone the violin itself.

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You can spend a lot, lot more than that just on a violin bow, let alone the violin itself.

I was present in an auction a couple of years ago when a violin bow sold for the hammer price of £4500.

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In 1928 my Grandfather bought a new house in the 'suburbs' of London for which he paid £350 ... well, we can see from the Wheatstone price lists for that period that a Tennor Treble Aeola with metal ends cost almost £30.... and surely that represented a very substantial investment for your average person.

 

Tommy Williams aluded to very poor wages being paid for the long hours and tricky work of making a set of concertina reeds and how he would try to make a little extra money playing music of an evening.

 

No, I do not think concertinas are expensive at the moment. Take a look at prices of Accordions for instance and remember that unlike vintage Concertinas which can be made to play like (almost) new, if you wish to play a good accordion you almost always need to buy new.

Edited by Geoff Wooff
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Don't forget that quite a few concertina-addicts ( like myself ) are not satisfied with one professional concertina, but have to stuff their cup-boards with good instruments. That keeps up the demand and the prices. I'm sure that there are more good ES-concertinas in this world than players!

 

The main problem of the English concertina in my opinion is that the typical players, who started to play during the concertina-revival in the 70th and 80th, are getting old now ( what was the age-average at your last concertina-meeting? ). There are few eager young ES players around. I wouldn't be surprised if the ES prices would start to come down in the future, when all those sons or daughters sell off their late dad's collections...

 

The same happend to the stamp-collectors or the player-piano scene. I have a lovely pedal-electric Duo Art piano with 300 rare reprocucing rolls, which I couldn't sell now at the actual cost of 35 years ago!

 

The situation is different with the anglo, where lots of youngsters are made to play them for Irish music ( or wish to do so ;-).

 

I don't go along with Geoff's opinoion about accordions, though. I play a 55 year old ( piano ) Jazz-Sonola and a 65 year old grey C#/D Soprani. I haven't seen or played anything as good these oldies.

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Take a look at prices of Accordions for instance and remember that unlike vintage Concertinas which can be made to play like (almost) new, if you wish to play a good accordion you almost always need to buy new.

 

This so so true, unfortunately... :angry:

 

(I used to waste quite an amount of good money in order to buy a decent melodeon until finding my then new Weltmeister Tex-Mex three-row box)

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I don't go along with Geoff's opinoion about accordions, though. I play a 55 year old ( piano ) Jazz-Sonola and a 65 year old grey C#/D Soprani. I haven't seen or played anything as good these oldies.

 

My two Hohner PAs are of that age too, and are in good working order - but there is no viable market for those better "oldies" - you just get lots of trash.

 

In contrast I bought my Lachenal Excelsior EC via eBay - not inexpensive, but such a fantastic player...

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