Selling off stuff!

[Deleted]

Well, I am now selling off my guitars and amps. Sold one of my favorite Amps last night. It felt as bad too me, to see it go out the door as it does when I sell one of my guitars.
Going to keep 2 of my amps, I had 7 of them. LOL!

Now I working on my guitars, I have 5 of them posted, but all I have gotten are offers to trade me something that I don't need or want. I have a bout 20 guitars that I brought with me from AZ.
I had close to 100 guitars at the start of last summer. Sold them off before we moved.

So now I made some hard decisions to sell off some more. Trying really had to down size. But I have to say it is a hard thing to do.

EB

[dnic]

Good luck finding buyers. That's not meant to be sarcastic. I hope you do well finding buyers. It's though letting go of gear.

[antares]

You're better placed to sell things on than I am Eddie. I need to thin down the herd but I find letting go very difficult. As Dane says, "Good luck". I get a little annoyed when I read of (eg) John and his pick ups or I think about how I'd like for (eg) Dane to take a look at my Firebird, perhaps the distance is in my favour otherwise the situation would get worse...

e&oe...

[GuitarAttack Forum]

Selling gear is tough, and I think the "Amazonization" of retail has made an impact. (I think I may have made up that word...comments please). This process is simply "I want it cheap, I want it now, I want free shipping, I want a free gift with it, I want free tech support, and if I don't like it I want to return it, no questions asked." Easy for the big conglomerate, but pretty tough for the single-person shop making custom guitar-related product.

I have been successful selling some gear on Reverb.com, but I think the major factor was my acceptance of the fact that I was only going to get pennies on the dollar for what I originally paid for the gear! I think I've said it before, but my Craigslist guitar experience was very poor, and I have abandoned the platform for everything except selling some random household goods I would normally sell at a garage sale.

John

[Deleted]

Yes the market here on selling things, is soft. I get a lot of people wanting to trade stuff. Sometimes I will trade. But the bad thing in trading is I still have to wait to cash out.

Most of my trades are for things I think I can resale and still get the money I was asking for the idem I traded. But once in while I trade for a guitar that after I do a set up on it, I wind up liking it so much I want to keep it. So this is where I am at now. I have all these guitars that I just love. I really don't want to sell them or trade them.

So for me I am in no big hurry to get rid of any of them. LOL!

But for me, I am also dealing with my hand and arms shaking. I was trying to play the other day and had to stop, because of the shaking. So I get frustrated, then I want to get rid of them all. But when I post them, deep inside of me I just can't let go.

Some of the guitars I have built, there are a few I would like to keep around. But the rest of them I might take apart and try selling them is parts.

Most of the time when selling, I do brake even or I sell and get more out of something than what I have in it. But there are them times I lose money on them. When my hobby was at it's peek, I didn't mind losing a little money, only because my hobby needed cash flow.

My hobby has always been self supporting, I never used moneys from our personal house account.

But now I don't have that, as far as my hobby goes. But I still wont give my stuff away. If I do give things away, I will give it to someone that I feel can't afford it. (I have done that a lot over the years) I would rather do that than give it someone who can afford it.
I get people all the time that try and get me down in price. The ones I wont deal with are the ones that supper low ball be. I don't mine people trying to make a deal with me. That is all part of selling. But the ones that come over and start playing games with me, and wast my time, I won't deal with them. I have and do ask or tell them to leave. Like I said, I really don't have to sell anything.

Like a lot of you, I have heard all kinds of story's, when selling things. One of my favorite ones is... I just look at another one "JUST LIKE" this one, and they wanted a lot less for it! Oh really??? Then why didn't you but it? You mean to tell me, you walked out of buying one "Just Like" mine for cheaper, and you new my price is higher, and now you want me to come down to the so call cheaper one! I DON"T THINK SO!

So again, when I put stuff up for sale, I really don't care if I sell the items or not. If I really want to get rid of my guitars, I can take a hit and drop the price way down or find some one that would like to have a guitars and can't afford it and give it to them. It's not always about how much can I make on the sale.

EB

[chezvoz]

The letting go of guitars is painful, and the amount folks want to give you for them makes it doubly painful.

I've been trying to downsize a bit as well. I have 10 things up on Craig's list right now - most not getting any action. My one bit of advice for Craig's List is not to accept emails. I have never sold anything to someone who didn't call me.

It's a very soft market now and you can pick up some great gear if you hustle. But I find most of the deals are an hour away, and time is the thing I have the least of.

Good luck on your sales!

[antares]

That's just it. Two sides of the same coin; "You can pick up some great deals if you hustle". At the end of the day the deal is done when both folks think they're getting something out of the exchange. When it goes a bit one sided there's no deal, or a deal under the duress of desparate stakes.

I'm with you Eddie, I'd rather give away a $500 guitar to someone that couldn't afford it than let it go for $85. Indeed I have done just that. (once!)

You see folks that are not willing to work for something do not respect it if and wben it happens along for them. They chuck it down and beat it up. I think breaking down and parting out is probably the only way, and it saddens me to say that.

Oh well, better play them them!

e&oe...

[Deleted]

Dec 13, 2018 15:06:00 GMT -6 chezvoz said:

The letting go of guitars is painful, and the amount folks want to give you for them makes it doubly painful.

I've been trying to downsize a bit as well. I have 10 things up on Craig's list right now - most not getting any action. My one bit of advice for Craig's List is not to accept emails. I have never sold anything to someone who didn't call me.

It's a very soft market now and you can pick up some great gear if you hustle. But I find most of the deals are an hour away, and time is the thing I have the least of.

Good luck on your sales!

I use to have my phone number on CL, and said in the add to call me, and if I didn't pick up, Leave a message and I would call back.

That was all good as long as I had my land line. After getting rid of the land line and going to cell phone, my cell phone exploded with spam and telemarketers. I started getting up to 200 calls a month.

So now I only put my email on CL. I tell people in the add to give me their name and phone number in the add. If they don't I won't respond. And I also add that if they would like me to contact them by phone let me know and I'll do that.

So far it's been working out pretty good. I had to take a lot of steps in getting rid of bogus phone calls. I even took my phone number off of Face Book. Now I get 2 or 3 a week that are bogus calls. Plus I had to get one of them spam blockers on my phone. It works pretty good. Still get a few that get through but I block the number and I don't hear from them again. Because if they do call me, the blocker picks it up and it wont even ring my phone.

The other night when I sold my amp, it was the first cash sale I have had in a long while. But he was one that had asked me to call. I did and a couple of hours later the amp was sold.

The other thing that I like about the email is that here in FL where I'm at (in the panhandle) People live in places that are at least an hour drive away from me. So if they have something they want to trade, they can send me pictures for me to look at. If I am interested, I let them know and then they are more likely to make the drive out.

I like getting the picture on my computer, because I can enlarge the pictures big enough for me to take a closer look at the item they are wanting to trade.

I have thought of getting a burner phone just for when I post things for sale. But things seem to be working out right now.

Wen I was in AZ I sold a lot of stuff on Face Book market place. But here I have not sold one thing. And it's not from a lack of trying.

All I am looking for right now is a speaker cab for a 12" speaker. But I might get my son and law to make me one. Other then that there is nothing else I want or need as far as guitars and amps go.

But I do look at CL, Reverb.com, FB market place and eBay to see if there are deals I just can't refuse. LOL!

I am just sad that my health has gotten worse, and because of that I need to let things go. I never thought I would end up like this. I has been said to do everything you want while you are young, because in your later days it won't be as easy.

EB

[Deleted]

[quote author="antares"

I'm with you Eddie, I'd rather give away a $500 guitar to someone that couldn't afford it than let it go for $85. Indeed I have done just that. (once!)

You see folks that are not willing to work for something do not respect it if and wben it happens along for them. They chuck it down and beat it up. I think breaking down and parting out is probably the only way, and it saddens me to say that.

Oh well, better play them them!



Well, I have done it more than once, giving away guitars over the years. Only one went wrong. I gave a guy a guitar, and I thought he would keep it. But I found it in a pawn shop a little over a month later. I was trying to help the guy out. Even told him that if he needed anything to let me know I would help him. He has 3 kids and was out of work.
But after I had gotten that guitar back, it was 2 months later he was in jail for drug use and sales of drugs. Broke my heart. Win some loos some.


Yes it is a buyers market right now. And there a lot of great deals to be had. I don't think it will last forever, but it's here for now.

As far as braking them down, and selling the parts, at least I would get something out of the guitar. I only have 2 or 3 that I might do that with.

EB

[Deleted]

Still plugging away selling guitars. I get a lot of responses but a lot of them are just unrealistic in their offers or ideas. In the last few days I must have had about 10 people wanting me to bright them the guitar they wanting to them... WOW! I am already selling way below what a dealer would want for them and now they want me to bring them to them? One guy talked me down then wanted me to pay to have it shipped. What the heck???!!! I have had people bring me things, but I also give then something for their trouble, I don't expect anyone to do anything for me for free. Well, anyway, Things have changed over the last few years.
EB

[GuitarAttack Forum]

Eddie - I’ve seen the trend of “free shipping” creeping into some of my sales. I guess we can build the shipping costs into our price, but shipping a guitar is pretty expensive no matter which service you use.

John

[Deleted]

Jan 20, 2019 9:44:16 GMT -6 GuitarAttack Forum said:

Eddie - I’ve seen the trend of “free shipping” creeping into some of my sales. I guess we can build the shipping costs into our price, but shipping a guitar is pretty expensive no matter which service you use.

John

Yep, been there done that in the past too. The last time I tried to sell a guitar on eBay I got a lot of "your asking too much" But it's hard to price a guitar and offer free shipping. I don't sell at all on eBay anymore. In fact I had like 100 favorite sellers on there at one time, Now that has gone all the way down to around 20 sellers.
All of them that are no longer on in my favorites, because they have quit selling on eBay.

But I keep seeing and hearing people that have quit selling on line due to the cost of shipping. I really don't see how anyone can make any money selling on eBay or some of the other places on line.
Maybe if I was shipping out a lot of item everyday, I could get some kind of brake on shipping. But then trying to find supply's to ship is another story in it self.
There are some music store that now charge for the shipping boxes.
The last guitars I shipped by the time it was all said and done was over $100.00. I took a big hit and lost money on that one. So that was the last time for me.

So I advertise on CL and FB market place. It may be like fishing, that is you have to go into a wait mode, before you sell anything, then there are times when you sell with in the first hour you post.
I got lucky yesterday, I had a guy that not only drove over 2 hours to come to me, but he wound up buying 2 of guitars (CASH) no trades but for cash. LOL! On top of it he wants to come back and buy one of my custom built guitars. He took pictures of it, and said he will be back to buy my custom made Eagle Blues neck though LP.
I really think he going to buy it. I'll be surprised if he doesn't.

So it took a long while before this guy seen my adds on CL and on FB market place. But at least I didn't have any shipping charges, or had to buy stuff to ship them in, or find someone to take somewhere to ship it. (due to I don't drive any more)

The thing I liked about this guy, was, he never tried to cut me down in my prices. I did give him a brake on the prices, due to the fact he bought two guitars. That was a good day for me.
EB

[Deleted]

Must be a role! Sold some more of my small music items yesterday, and got someone coming over to by another item! Cool! I hope it keep on going!
EB

[Deleted]

Well I am on a role! Just sold 2 more guitars to one person. That is 4 guitars in the last two weeks! I have never had that happen before. 4 guitars 2 guys! WOW! And no trading except for cash. Now my room is looking pretty empty.
I am down to two more to sell, and that will be it for me. The rest of the guitars I will be keeping for a long while.

But on another note... I bought some new pots and push pulls for one of my other guitars. You all may remember it. It is the set neck walnut LP I built sometime ago.
I Before I left AZ I had got hold of a set of USA Gibson T top pickups, and they are 4 wire. So I am going to install them in the guitar. Once I get the parts in, I'll do a post about the project.

EB