List, I'm writing up a market value appraisal for a 1985 satin ebony Baldwin L grand. Would appreciate any input on the following. It's in reasonably good mechanical condition. No obvious problems, other than what we've come to expect as features on Baldwin grands. There are some finish issues, which I think might cost up to $800 to repair to look fairly nice. Small chips and some cracking developing on the top of the stretcher. 1 mm of crown at the longest rib; none elsewhere. Positive bearing. Bridges OK, some minor checking in places. Sound is typical Baldwin, with sustain of 7 seconds at C6, 3-4 seconds at C7, Tuning pins tight, as expected. Most steel strings are coated lightly with rust, more at the bass end, less at the treble. All string coils are lightly rusted, except in the very treble section. This is the kind of rust that looks bad, but wouldn't necessarily affect tone or cause string breakage. It looks like it was in a damp environment for a while (comes from Florida originally). The action is in good condition -- not excessive wear. Would benefit from minor reconditioning (cleaning, polishing key pins, hammer reshaping) and regulation. According to Larry Fine's depreciation schedule and a 2008-2009 price of a new L at $40K, an "Average" Baldwin L would be valued roughly at $13,600. However, with the rust and finish issues, my "gut" tells me a more realistic market value would be somewhere between $7-8.5K. Input? -- JF -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/pianotech.php/attachments/20100201/83ad216a/attachment.htm>
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