“What’s This Worth?” Thread

[vjmanzo]

I suspect VJ of resting comfortably in the deep, deep pockets of Big Cantaloupe

I nearly fell off my chair laughing over that one! For context: that’s a reference to a claim I made on my website about eating cantaloupe every day #vegan

Excellent rant, Marc! Some people’s character is for sale, it seems

[Voice Of Reason]

The bigger the smile, the bigger the lie.

I always worry about people who smile too much, especially if they have something to sell…

Reading your response, it’s no wonder the state of the review/YouTube market is so questionable. Take PRS for instance. While they are in tons of videos (sponsorship, etc.), I have yet to meet anyone (in person) who actually owns one (i.e. this includes the SE line). Pricing isn’t the only deterrent (as I encountered plenty with expensive instruments), however never is there a PRS in sight. I assume their brand fares much better nationally than internationally (in my case, Canada).

There’s something rotten in the state of Denmark…it must be that Big Cantaloupe.

[mmmguitar]

As anyone who checks Reverb listings as frequently as I do has observed, the highest-priced entries have consistently been the same three or four speculators since 2020 (with the recent addition of someone who pounced on the Canadian auction some of us watched in real time).

For whatever reason, Reverb isn't cataloging more than one sold Fly Supreme listing (the one with non-original pickups). At the moment, Google is saying that no Supreme on Reverb ever sold for more than $4,785.43 prior to 2020 (anyone able to correct my spotty data please let me know; so I can update it here).

So, even though the original listing seems to be missing, we can still find out via catalogued buyer feedback for these missing listings that the $9,000 '98 Supreme currently listed on Reverb appears to have been purchased by the seller on Sept 16th, 2020 (a few months into the Parker speculator bubble kicking off).

Given they're apparently trying to double their money, I thought it might be helpful to post the prior listings for Parkers the seller presumably still owns. Should they also find their way to the auction block, prospective buyers may wish to reference these previous sale prices in their negotiations:

Purple Burst Mojo Flame (no serial shared)
Prerefined Majik Blue Deluxe (no serial shared)
Black DF22 w/ Floyd (serial 1011004)

In addition to these, there are a Deluxe and Artist missing from the Reverb catalog.

Edit: Updated pre-2020 Supreme sale record thanks to Pat making the time to dig for me.

[Patzag]

This one: https://reverb.com/item/18089834-parker ... preme-1997 sold for 4700 and change 4 years ago. Pretty specimen.
9K is a little excessive for my taste.

Honestly, if I found a minty one for 4K I'd jump on it - get in debt and buy it! I just can't justify 9 Gs for anything like that. I also don't believe it would sound so different from my Deluxe or Classic to justify that kind of money.

I turned 61 recently. I'm contemplating what it would take to buy a KP Archtop by the time I'm 65. Got to talk to VJ about that!

[mmmguitar]

I turned 61 recently. I'm contemplating what it would take to buy a KP Archtop by the time I'm 65.

Perhaps through an apprenticeship angle or Bugs Bunny disguise? FWIW, my Supreme most certainly does not sound thousands "better" than my Classic or even the Deluxe I bought for $600, prior to the advent of the Parker speculator market. Then again, my playing is the weak link in how everything sounds.

[Neongreenman]

This one: https://reverb.com/item/18089834-parker ... preme-1997 sold for 4700 and change 4 years ago. Pretty specimen.
9K is a little excessive for my taste.

Honestly, if I found a minty one for 4K I'd jump on it - get in debt and buy it! I just can't justify 9 Gs for anything like that. I also don't believe it would sound so different from my Deluxe or Classic to justify that kind of money.

I turned 61 recently. I'm contemplating what it would take to buy a KP Archtop by the time I'm 65. Got to talk to VJ about that!

Having played a Supreme extensively and having owned the Maple Custom, which was just a supreme with less figure, yes it does sound different.

Facts mixed with my personal opinions: Ken engineered pre-refined flys with the original intent to be as thin as possible while being able to support the tension of a tuned set of strings and remain stable. If you punch a cement wall, what happens? If you punch a thin sheet of aluminum, what happens? The thinner material resonates/vibrates/transfers energy more. From there you can make whatever remark you want about the tone itself. But in the original Fly models, with all of them having all of the exact same specs except the body wood, that is literally the only difference between models. With Parkers, I would argue the woods used make a much larger impact on tone than on other guitars. When you play a 12 lb Les Paul the proportion of the tone which is simply "string to pickup" is a much higher percentage than a Parker. In a Parker, you are hearing more of the wood because they are so much more resonant. If the guitar vibrates more and transfers energy more, the medium through which that vibration is carried is going to impact the sound more. There is a noticeable difference between a Classic, Deluxe, Stealth, Artist, etc. All the same specs/pickups/neck woods, but with different body woods. The Mojo is even more different because it has the mahogany neck and different pickups.

Is a Supreme worth $5000 more than a Deluxe? Well that depends what you want. Aesthetics are always a lot more on guitars. Solid pieces of flamed maple cost more than solid pieces of poplar. Yes it sounds different. But its because the buyer wants the beautiful figured maple. They also made a heck of a lot more Deluxes and Classics than Supremes and Artists.

My opinion on the Supreme/Maple Custom is that the bridge position gets a little too snappy for my taste, but the neck position has this extremely sweet singing sparkle to the sound that I thought was extremely unique and distinguishable. If I ever were to buy one of those models again, I'd probably be most excited about that sound. But yes - I'd mostly be buying because it's beautiful and was the flagship under Ken.

[Voice Of Reason]

As anyone who checks Reverb listings as frequently as I do has observed, the highest-priced entries have consistently been the same three or four speculators since 2020 (with the recent addition of someone who pounced on the Canadian auction some of us watched in real time).

How do these few sellers manage to keep selling at such ridiculous prices?
Do they really have the rarer/mint gear or do they just drive the prices up by fraudulently bidding/buying their own guitars?

p.s. You could always hop your way to their business addresses with that Bugs Bunny suit. Nibble their fingers or something

[vjmanzo]

Congrats on 61, Pat!

my Supreme most certainly does not sound thousands "better" than my Classic or even the Deluxe…

I agree with this completely—although, I only have the Fly Supreme’s uglier twin brother the Fly Maple Custom Subtle differences in timbre between the maple body and the poplar body. Looks great though! I think @Neongreenman’s point about the pricetag on aesthetics is noteworthy.

How do these few sources manage to keep selling at such ridiculous prices?

Are these Flys actually selling at these ($9k+) prices? It doesn’t seem that they move when sellers ask that much.

Perhaps through an apprenticeship angle or Bugs Bunny disguise?

[Voice Of Reason]

How do these few sources manage to keep selling at such ridiculous prices?

Are these Flys actually selling at these ($9k+) prices? It doesn’t seem that they move when sellers ask that much.

I bought mine on eBay nearly 16 years ago. I even stopped selling/dealing through local ads at all. There were too many frustrations stemming from lowballing, inaccuracies, rude behaviour…and poorly maintained gear. Too many people had no common sense.

I hope Flys don’t sell at these inflated prices, especially in poor condition. After all, finding someone to fix anything (or more like willing to) is not that simple. An authorized Parker repairman once charged me for two hours’ work to simply re-solder a single joint on the PCB (roughly $150 CAN… insane). Yet, I recently read it took Parker Guitars only five minutes to install…

[vjmanzo]

There were too much many frustrations stemming from lowballing, inaccuracies, rude behaviour…and poorly maintained gear.

I hear you loud and clear, unfortunately Not hyping it up: I have made a few Fly exchanges through our forum here and, each time, I felt like I had a clearer picture of what I was getting beforehand—warts and all—and that made it a better experience for me. My name and reputation are part of the equation with an exchange like that as were the other person’s, so I didn’t wonder if I was going to be shanked in the parking lot of a Target over a damn guitar!

I know that Reverb and FB Marketplace, as companies, have tried to establish a sense of “community” around purchases on their platforms, but I don’t think they’re all that genuine. Some people here on Fly Clone make accounts solely so they can sell their Flys, which is perfectly fine, but I don’t, personally, feel the same assurance, as a buyer, as when someone who has a few posts is selling something.

Now I understand why my parents warned me about buying used things on the internet twenty+ years ago! A brick and mortar store like Guitar Center or Sam Ash has their reputation on the line when they put something used up for sale...which is probably why they have such good return policies.

[mmmguitar]

This white '96 Deluxe with a few paint chips (and what appears to be Ken's signature) was listed for $2,450+tax, raised to $2,650 once the seller decided they could probably get more, then seems to have sold for the increased price with zero offers.

I highlighted the listing because Pearl White Flys (from any era) are increasingly uncommon to see in the secondhand market.

Adding to that, we have a beater '95 (serial 051035BP) for $3,059.99+tax, presumably after selling for quite a bit less than the $3,800+tax it was previously listed for, prior to receiving seven offers. Edit: Thanks VJ for sharing the offers.

[vjmanzo]

we have a beater '95 (serial 051035BP) for $3k, down from what it previously sold for.

…what it previously sold for was probably an offer though, right? So the actual selling price was likely lower than what Reverb is showing [insert side rant about Reverb inflating prices through practices like this], correct?

[mmmguitar]

…what it previously sold for was probably an offer though, right?

At the moment, Reverb isn't displaying the previous listing as having received offers. But it may well have.

[vjmanzo]

Ahhh—I see this:

…so 7 offers, but no confirmation on whether one of those offers was actually accepted (and, of course, no confirmation on the actual selling price)

[BMA_USA]

If you hear differences between two solid body electric guitars, it's almost certainly not attributable to the body wood. There are many reasons they may sound different but the type of wood used for the body isn't one of them. It's just one of those things that we all believed for a really long time because it seemed obvious and there was no science on it, but Zollner's "Physics of the Electric Guitar" being released and translated to English makes it quite clear now that the the body is not influential in any meaningful way.

[mmmguitar]

Zollner's "Physics of the Electric Guitar" being released and translated to English makes it quite clear now that the the body is not influential in any meaningful way.

I love that the book is a 1,200 page buildup to a bass player joke. The thing is, though: Even if Zollner was required reading for guitarists, we'd still buy guitars based on how our eyes tell us they sound (and beauty is so often in the ear of the beholder).

My thoughts on the matter can be summarized in this way: Ken has that anecdote about building two identical Flys which nonetheless sounded different - yet sold models distinguished by tonewood pairings, if for no reason other than the people buying the guitars thought that way.

My point being that, whether you're selling Flys or pies, the customer dictates what goes into that pizza oven - regardless of which ingredients the person making them happens to prefer. And since when does business allow epistemological inferences to intrude? We're all so eager to buy our way out of how we sound, that we rarely require more than the suggestion - We just want to skip straight to the honeymoon (which I'm presently on with a Suhr Modern Antique that plays like butter).

[BMA_USA]

It reminds me of this Tversky quote about his research on the "hot hand" in basketball:

I've been in 1000 arguments over this topic. I've won them all, and I've convinced no one.

It sort of feels that way most of the time, but the bigger point is that the people who can figure it out are better equipped to ignore their lying eyes and maybe save some money in the process. I'm still amazed by how much of a difference even minor adjustments to the pickup heights make on the Gen 1 Flys. I wonder how many people never seriously fiddled with that before sending one off for Ed Roman to butcher? Seems like at least a few of the ones on Reverb right now anyway.

[mmmguitar]

If I may be forgiven for piggybacking two more quotes (I've seen both misattributed wildly; so I'll just claim that the old woman from the end of Candide who lost her left buttock to cannibalism said them): "It's easier to fool someone than convince them they've been fooled", and "You can always trust your ears - It's the brain that's gullible."

I think the common ground we can all agree on is that those Parkers sound great, regardless of what plastic they're all made from.

[mmmguitar]

These don't seem to pop up as often:

'09 Mojo MIDI (Roland GK, pre-Graphtech) in Dark Metallic Gray for $3,049 before tax, shipped in Parker gigbag from Wisconsin. [Update: Sold within hours.]

There's also the potential to score a '98 Emerald Green Deluxe in Florida for under $2k with an offer, assuming the seller's in the hurry to offload it that the low starting price for the auction suggests. [Update: Sold after four bids for $2,550.99, plus tax.]

[mmmguitar]

We've seen NiteFly owners grow more and more bold in the speculator marketplace known as Reverb; so it's no surprise that the owner of a green NFV-SA set up for slide with high action and a set of 12s wants to see if they can get more than $3k for it, at a time when the $2,600 Fly listings aren't moving. It seems the era of sub-$1K listings in the NiteFly market ended in September; when a sunburst one sold for $959

[Updates: On 2/4/23, the linked NiteFlySA's asking price was dropped to $2,900. As of 3/6/23, the price was further decreased to $2,249 - Still $1,000 more than the two cheapest NiteFly listings it's competing with].

3/9 - NiteFly decreased to $2,100 and still competing with Flys.
3/16 - Further decreased to $1,985 and out of Fly range, but still competing with cheaper NiteFlys.
3/22 - Down to $1,820.
3/27 -$1,774.
4/12 - $1,509.
4/15 - Jacked up to $1,556.
4/22 - Dropped to $1,419.
4/23 - $1,396.
4/25 - $1,221.

We also seem to have settled into a six month cycle wherein the actual demand for Flys is periodically satisfied; and Reverb consequently becomes congested with competing listings for the same dozen Majik Blue, Dusty Black, and Cherry Mojo Flys. Having initially been priced arbitrarily, the sellers then begin dropping prices to match the next lowest listing superficially resembling theirs (As I observed, here):

This white ‘95 Deluxe has been sitting for a while at $3k; so the seller’s brought it down to $2,560+tax. Given the white ‘96 which preceded it sold for an undisclosed amount after several offers, I’m curious to see if the relative rarity of pearl white Flys leads it to sell before any of the other colors currently listed in the same price range do [Update: Sat for weeks before finally selling on 2/7/23].

Update: The '98 Supreme on Reverb is down to $8,000 from $9,000 - Priced to move, now! A real Speculator Special.

As of January 28th, we have this poplar/basswood DF824 w/Hexpander ("MaxxFly MIDI") in white listed for $5,633+tax. For reference, the self-described "biggest Parker collector in the world" (banned from Reverb no fewer than three times in the span of a few months) previously asked ten grand (before tax) for the all-mahogany version of the same model. Note, however, that that particular seller's listing prices were and remain strictly speculative [Update: MaxxFly MIDI sold right after mentioning it here].

And as of January 31st, we have a black '97 Deluxe priced down to $2,349+tax. Other than the MaxxFly MIDI from the 28th and the $2600 Italian Plum Deluxe listing that was up for a week or more, the Parkers on the Speculator Marketplace formerly known as Reverb don't seem to be moving much in 2023.