There is no doubt the easy access has moved the ball. I know of one dealer that buys at "real" public auctions and then posts 200+ items he's bought onto ebay starting at .99 and no reserve. He has sales over $5mil, and is evidently making pretty good change because I've watched him do it at least 5 years. But, as an example.

He bought a piece at Freemans in Philly for $3175. A piece I had bought online, never got over to inspect. When I picked it up I could tell immediately it was not a "vase" as described but a container that was missing it's lid, so I refused it and made them take it back. In the subsequent sale [with exact same description] Chamberlain bought it for the $3175. Put it on ebay, where I bought it for $1050 plus shipping, and then flipped it to a Japanese dealer who was at the Baltimore show for $4000.

apples vs oranges. those examples (and many similar scenarios) just don't apply to used guitars in the context of this discussion.

No, it's not.

I buy much much less on ebay than I used to because I'm just inundated with the NEW business, but when I handled alot of used I was a player and usual winner on anything good, desirable, or easily resold. Just another dealer buying on ebay, a wholesale marketplace, where privates would often make things too expensive for me, and I'd be the under or 2nd underbidder. The only recent example I wasn't was that $6200 LNG, I was way down that list.

It is still a wholesale marketplace, but the percentage of private sales is getting higher and the margins for dealers squeezed.

The power of the dealer and therefore the ability to collect a margin on resale is heavily dependent on the seller's access to the market and their desire to engage with the marketplace. The product being bought and sold has a huge influence on that. The greater the chance that the product is being held by a younger, more tech savvy person, the more likely they are to bypass the dealer and go directly to the marketplace. To Glen's point, recent production guitars and antiques being two pretty dissimilar things.

I buy and sell a bunch of bourbon, which has been completely democratized by things like Facebook. The remaining dealers (which I classify as people looking to hold inventory for a short time and move for margin) have been squeezed down to selling extremely rare bottles to collectors, moving things like Pappy Van Winkle to rich clients or buying large lots from collectors. The vast majority of the sales are one-offs between private parties.

^ exactly. The days of Romanoffs (jagoff middleman selling used stuff with an ego) is basically coming to an end. They get called out online and customers just don't need them. Rich your "new business" is busy for exactly this reason.

In the end this is completely a semantics discussion. If you take out strict definitions like "wholesale price" and "dealer price" and classifications of the sales channels, the market price is determined by a distribution of sale prices. If an extremely large percentage of the total sales are going through eBay, Reverb, Craigslist, Facebook, etc, then the price established there IS the market price and dealer prices become the outliers.

The new market functions totally differently, because there is still a wholesale tier that end users are locked out of. Rich is extremely busy with new business because he effectively sells value added services to his customers.

Yup. I suspect Rich knows that but just likes to argue semantics. Rich as a stand-alone dealer can't offer "used business" the same service it is unsteady and declining. Also can't compete with notably Guitar Center (thousands of used instruments) and online classifieds.

OTOH he nails the "new guitar business" SERVICE... improving Indo JEMs with setup, checking new Ibanez guitars, etc. Remove the "service" and Rich (or similar mom/pop "dealer") is not needed (would shutter a brick/mortar store).

For 2 fairly intelligent guys you do not listen very well.

There are 100's of thousands of dealers of 1000's of categories shopping ebay for inventory. It doesn't matter if it's guitars, vintage clothes, comic books, toys, cars, every category you can imagine there are several dealers of it shopping ebay for the best material with good margins. If you think George Gruhn isn't shopping ebay you would be foolish. If you think Peter Klutt and Shaughnessy aren't shopping Ferrari's on ebay, now you're getting into the dumb stages. Hell he found this chassis on ebay!!
$2.8M Ferrari Chassis Found

Yes, if I was still young and hungry I would definitely still have 50 used guitars for sale at all times, but I'm not. I'm very selective with what I buy and how much margin there has to be, because the fact with used guitars is, as you all KNOW, you're depending on correct descriptions from the seller to judge all the above, used guitars are usually old guitars, and old guitars are typically fairly dirty, have old guitars problems, and probably had enough old guitar problems that's the reason they're for sale, it's somebody elses headache. There are just as many old guitars that are in good technical nick, but the difference between the 2 is more luck than amount of time talking to the seller. After 20 years I can pretty much just read an add and tell if the seller has even inspected the guitar before listing it. Take the current add for the metal design, you're both aware of, and read the add "yes it needs some tlc", well WTF does that really tell me except he can't be bothered to actually tell me what he knows it needs, and I have to chase him down and play 50 questions to find out. That's an instant PASS and back button, unless, it's something very desirable and worth the effort. LISTING a used guitar for sale the right way, takes alot of time, prepping a sold used guitar, the right way, takes alot of time. The MARGINS on used guitars are far better, but it's offset by a much higher workload. Which is generally why I just buy lots of seconds that I just have to pick off a sheet, far easier.

Roman, for all his faults, knew 1 thing you guys ignore. There are many tiers of pricing, and absolutely, nobody was higher than Roman on more contemporary material, but he also knew, the top tier buyer, wasn't spending his time shopping on ebay. He's spending his time MAKING MONEY!.Then when he wants to scratch the acquisition itch he has a reputable dealer [or network of them] that he shops and buys from, because the last thing he has time for is to constantly shop what's passing over ebay for that rare nut that almost never appears.

80's/90's RG550's are a dime a dozen, so are R's and S's, etc. No, there's still some margin left is plenty of them but it's not enough for most dealers to play with, those are for very hungry dealers. I'm looking for big cats, and so is every other good dealer in every category.

The end result of any open auction is pitting who is searching for, found, was interested in enough to track, and bid, on any given item during any given 1 week period. Yes, sometimes the big boys will pop on ebay and have a look, which is why you'll see EVO's listed at $14,500, or JS2PRM's at $14,000. This is top tier pricing with a hair of crazy thrown in. They're trying to hook those big fish if they happen to swing by. And every now and then, they will, and put one in the boat. But that's generally not the case. The typical sales results are average buyers willing to pay average prices, and are searching hard and spending lots of time to do so. [some, being more average than the rest].

Bottom line, ebay is an auction and thus is still a wholesale marketplace, where 2 privates can get together and create top tier pricing, but more often than not, you end up with typical results for a wholesale marketplace.

Your trophy hunting discussion has lulled me to sleep!

That's too bad, you might have actually learned something.......

that was a 101 entry level course

That refutes every one of your posts as babbling and uninformed. So maybe you should start with 101, and then we'll move to 102.

This just proves you're out of touch. I can't compete with GC on Used? I BUY!! from GC Used, enough that I have a tax exempt account setup with GCcorp. Why? Because they'll do stupid GC stuff like list a brand new [preowned] EVO for $4500, and they're easier to deal with than ebay.

Correct on the added services, but thinking brick and mortar stores are not needed and will shutter?, if GC hasn't put them out of business, then they're survivors and there will always be the need for a local brick and mortar. There is a % of the buying public that won't buy anything they can't put their hands on first. B&M's have had to adjust to compete in the online climate and many are doing extremely well [better than GC] and also have many alternate revenue sources like band rentals, lesson departments, school of rock, and "staples" you need now, not when amazon prime gets it to you.

You're like a toddler in the replies. Of course you can compete one or two axes here or there but not as an entire "used guitar" business model.

Of course I'm a toddler, you did hear I jacked my ankle Saturday and am toddling everywhere I walk!

GC is one of the greatest abusers of allowing ebay completed sales to dictate their pricing structure. Anybody can compete with that, as long as they only give 50% in trade value. If you mean in shear volume, who cares? They have 500+ stores, I'd have to have 500 stores worth of inventory to make their model work.