I am a recent subcriber and have enjoyed looking over your cyber-shoulders. It's time to leap in. Maybe this post will be of some interest. Excuse the two short paragraphs of storytellin'; storyteller's license. One small college I work for just asked me to appraise a piano which was given to them. The college needed to know if the piano was worth over $1000 so they could appropriately list the donor in the Presidents Club. They also wanted to send the donor a statement of thanks with acknowledgement of the gift worth x-amount of $. I finally found the piano after bouncing thru about five offices and four secretaries. The piano was located in a maintenance barn behind 20 rows of theatre seats in storage, which proved to be more interesting to get past than all those secretaries. Anyway the donor, as it turns out, is an antique dealer who "75% restored" a 1850 Pleyel grand. It had some new strings and hammers haphazardly thrown on, it kind-of played (the hammers hit the strings!), and a little price tag of $1900 on the fairly beautiful case. Personally I do not think (especially after talking to the music dept) that it will ever play a Chopin mazurka again. My questions: 1. Does this piano have some value? 2. And the ethical meat here, what would you do? Obviously I am at liberty to plead ignorance to my college friends. I told them I would try to find some info about the worth. And I really need to know if there is some special value here, because then it is easy. What the college really wants is for me to say the piano is worth $1500 so they can be done with the gift and not offend a donor. Wash my hands? Thanks. Ben Griffith, RPT
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC