Could use help identifying this (supposedly vintage) Mandolin

Hello, everyone. First of all let me just say this is a great community! It's great to see such a passionate group of people all discussing a shared interest. Bravo!

I'm a long time musician who is looking dabble in Mandolin. I have the opportunity to purchase this "closet find" from an old relative that appears to be authentic, but I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to "vintage" instruments.

I'm hoping you all can help me!

Attachment 196418
Attachment 196420
Attachment 196421
Attachment 196422

The seller wants a little over ~$200 USD. He thinks it's from the late 70's or 80's, and has been stored in this case indoors since then. I've read a bit about the Korean/Japanese imports but I'm not really sure how to identify one, or if they're worth anything.

What do you guys think? Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm about to go meet him to look at this in person later today. Huge thanks in advance!

I would call it an older instrument, but not "vintage" by my standards.
It was built either while Martin owned the Vega name in the 1970's, or shortly thereafter when Galaxy Trading Company picked up the brand.
It was not made in the US. It was either built in Japan or Korea by whatever factory was building Sigma guitars at the time, or possibly in the Netherlands, where Martin had a few guitars built with the Vega label.

$200 sounds like a fair price, at least as long as it is in decent condition and doesn't need any major work to make it playable. It's hard to say much more about it, since we can't tell from the pictures whether or not the instrument was made from all solid woods.
Either way, it is not a valuable instrument.

If you're looking to "dabble" in mandolin, this one should be good enough to get you started, given the caveats mentioned by rcc56 above.

Len B.
Clearwater, FL

Several threads in VM-marked Vega mandolins; here's one.

I'd say definitely Asian-made, probably 1980's when the Vega trademark was sold to a distributor, rather than a manufacturer like C F Martin. Other "VM" mandolins are very much like Asian models with other labels.

Probably a decent instrument (hope so, anyway), but don't pay too much -- couple hundred, maybe?