Croatian Style Tenor Guitar/Mandolinetto made in Cleveland 1920s

**NickR** · Feb-13-2019, 12:03pm

I am not quite sure what this is called but it certainly looks amazing having been made by a Croatian in Ohio. It may well be newer than the 1920s judging by the tuner buttons: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Mandochel...8SU:rk:15:pf:0

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**Bruce Clausen** · Feb-13-2019, 12:13pm

Nice! The family is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamburica

Scale is 25". There is a member called cello (celo, csello), so it's probably that.

**allenhopkins** · Feb-13-2019, 12:53pm

Bencic doesn't show up on the Mugwumps index of instrument makers. Really nice instrument, but I'm not sure I'd pop $2.2K US for it.

**NickR** · Feb-13-2019, 1:03pm

I imagine it would be hard to value such an instrument as it is probably the only one. It's a shame he did not get Lloyd Loar to sign it! It could be a "Loar Era" instrument. The whole collecting mania thing has got out of hand, I am afraid. Here is a display of these instruments at the Musical Instrument Museum at Tempe, Arizona. It is at that link that Bruce Clausen posted.

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**Seter** · Feb-13-2019, 1:19pm

I have a well made and fairly ornate tamburica instrument, a bisernica that I got for about $200. It is definitely a great instrument and I feel like it should have cost me much more but I guess for supply and demand reasons they generally sell for much less than $2.2k. I wonder how common they are in Britain, we have a fairly large Balkan population in the USA that maybe the UK lacks?

**LadysSolo** · Feb-13-2019, 11:40pm

I am interested in seeing if it sells simply because I am from near Cleveland. Nice looking instrument.

**mrmando** · Feb-14-2019, 1:29am

Given the proportion of the body to the neck, I should think this is more likely a brac than a celo, but I could be wrong. No way it's going to fetch what's being asked for it, though.

**AndyV** · Feb-14-2019, 4:48am

This item is in Ontario Canada

**Seter** · Feb-14-2019, 9:56am

Oh yes I see that now, I just saw the ebay.uk link and erroneously assumed it was in the UK. I wonder how much it'll end up going for, I'll keep an eye on it.

**Seter** · Feb-14-2019, 9:57am

Now that I think about it, I think my bisernica may have been listed as a mandolin itself. I suppose listing as a mandolin family instrument would probably get it more hits than tamburitza family.