As a piano tuner in Massillon and Canton Ohio, I see lots of pianos. Good ones and bad ones. And if you look on internet classified ads, you will always see pianos listed for sale. Many of them will be free. Some are garbage but others are good, quality pianos.

But here’s what I see happening a lot; the average person looking to buy or sell a piano likely doesn’t know how to tell the difference between a junk piano and a good piano. When they look at a website such as Facebook Marketplace, at any given time there might be 5 to 10 free pianos along with a few that are listed for between $100 to $500. So, it gives the impression that pianos are practically worthless and most of them you can’t even give away.

But let me tell you about what happened recently. I had a customer call me and say she received a free piano and wanted it tuned. I drove to her house and was surprised when I walked in and looked at the piano. It was about 7 years old and was one of the top brands of pianos in the world. I asked how she got it for free and she said the previous owner thought no one wants pianos anymore, so he just gave it to her for free. Imagine the look on her face when I told her that the piano she just got for free was worth $5,000.

If you have a piano you want to get rid of, how do you decide how much it’s worth?

Here are four questions to answer when selling a used piano:
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Most people view pianos as being static, unchanging objects. They are likely to perceive a 50 year old piano as being no different than a 1 year old piano. If given the choice between a piano that costs $100 or one that costs $1,000, a person, with little knowledge of pianos might conclude that the two instruments are fundamentally the same.

But that is far from the truth. Instead, think of pianos as being more like cars. I love antique cars. If I made up my mind to purchase one, I could go about it in one of two ways, I could find an antique car in excellent condition like this one.

Or I could go find one that costs very little money like the one below:

The problem, however, is that the two are not equal.

The one that’s in excellent condition, speaks for itself. But the rust bucket needs an enormous amount of money, parts and labor before it can be driven again. I’m not a mechanic. I’m not able to work on cars myself. If I bought the car in the second picture, I would have to hire an automotive expert to do that work for me and I’d end up paying him more than I would have spent on the car in the first image.

Likewise, most people are not piano technicians. If they purchased a run down, worn out piano, they will have to hire a piano tuner to fix it. And he may have to replace strings, hammers, dampers, felts, springs, straps, and many other parts inside the piano. That’s going to be very expensive. You could have saved money by having purchased a piano that’s in excellent condition.

Of course, you may not have the experience to know if a piano is or is not in good condition, but you can hire a piano tuner to inspect the piano you’re interested in buying. He’ll be able to tell you everything that’s wrong with it.

Photo credit: flickr Creative Commons, 1956 Buick Series 60 Century 2 door Riviera Hardtop by Sicnag
Photo credit: flickr Creative Commons, among the dead by Mike Tewkesbury