Can this Gibson really fetch such a price?

[journeybear]

You cannot be sirius!



"This is a museum mandolin
If you are sirius- please call and we will give you more information
With Original case"

Probably original strings, too.

[journeybear]

Here's a late-'30's A-l for sale, asking price $1350. Whoever "appraised" this one for $15-20 thousand, was just goofy.

Funny how much difference a misplaced "0" can make. If that's the explanation. Sweet nothings!

[Denis Kearns]

Wow, I guess it’s time for me to sell my A50 that I use for my kitchen table mandolin; got it for $150 at a local pawn shop and only had to clean off the accumulated dust, replace the rusty strings, install new Klusen tuners (button rot) and get a tailpiece cover. It’s not mint, having five spots that really look like BB hits and it’s lacking a pickguard, but it’s fun to play while I look out the window and daydream. But, boy, if I could get 10 grand for it.........!!!

- Denis

[Danny Clark]

i think the "sirius " answers the question

[journeybear]

I wonder about that comment that it is a "museum mandolin". That may point to an aspect of its price that I am not aware of ... Something extra-mandolinny that makes it more significant.

I think it's more likely she's just being pompous, positing a pontificating piece of puffery. Though to be fair, and despite that fun bit of folderol, she didn't say "museum mandolin." She was referring to the term "abrasions" as a "fancy museum word for scratches." But I will say, it is not in "gorgeous condition." There are some nasty scratches on the top, on the bass side, as well as a scrape along the binding there.

By the way, the other mandolin she mentions that she had seen in Indianapolis looks like a much nicer mandolin, and actually may have been worth $4000, to the right buyer.

[JeffD]

I mean, in the original Craig's List ad. "This is a museum mandolin."

But yea it could equally be a pompous piece of puffery.

I bought, and subsequently sold, a beautiful bed coverlet that was a deaccession from a museum. I loved it and unfortunately had to sell it. In selling it through an antiques broker I was advised to mention, and detail, that it had been a part of a museum collection. These things matter to some.

[journeybear]

Oh! Oops! My bad ...

Nothing pompous about the ad (except the price), but the Ph.D. in the video is another story. In more ways than one.

And yes, being termed a museum piece adds at least the perception of it being significant, somehow. People assume that if a museum determines it worthy of exhibition, it must be extraordinary, even exceptional. One wonders what that means in this case.

When, through a fluky series of circumstances, I had a sculpture constructed for a school project exhibited at Yale's Peabody Museum of Natural History, I made a point of putting that on my college applications. By itself, it didn't make the work any more valuable or even noteworthy, but it did sound impressive.