I did not want to step on the Sheerhorn sales thread in the classified but I have some thoughts on purchasing high end items.
I think that you need three things to make a large purchase such as a high end instrument, car or home.
You need desire, you need the means and then you need to justify the purchase in your mind.
If you have the desire for something and you have the means to afford it, all you need to do is justify the purchase.
Most of us have the desire, but don't have the means, therefore we can not justify the purchase..
If I have the desire and means, I can justify any purchase that I want to make. I've done it on more than one occasion.
BB
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What is boils down to is one's priorities. Nearly everyone would have to forgo one thing to aquire another. If one can justify to one's self, in most cases that is all that is necessary.
Dean
We can aquire the means by slowy, little by little, year after year put $$$ into a savings that is for nothing but equipment. Anyway, that how I pull it off.
Most important, I think, for purchasing expensive used equipment is to actually give it a test drive. Buying sight unseen I've realized does not always work out. We have a fantasy in our minds of the sound and feel that we're looking for. Hoping that this next instrument will do it for us. But without spending time with it we are taking a wild guess. I've been making an effort to stop myself from purchasing instruments sight unseen and unplayed. At least make sure there is a MBG or a trial period.
I am going this way in life just once, to the best of my knowledge. I cannot justify my high end resos on my talent, or skill. I can easily justify them on the basis of the enjoyment they give me, and it looks like the skill may arrive. Slowly to be sure, but it's satisfying.
We have been pretty careful with money, and I owe no one, so over a few years I was able to buy just what I wanted, even though GAS kicks in on occasion, like that Blonde Scheerhorn.
If need be, I can mow lawns, clerk at Walmart or some other means to save, hold garage sales, or take a tin cup to the corner, and buy that Scheerhorn. I think I can resist it. But as Will says, slowly, little by little, I can get it. If I want it bad enough, that is.
The only real problem to this approach is that you cannot have EVERYTHING you want. I'm working on that.
Bob,
You nailed it! I could have said the exact same thing. I can relate to your entire post. I will be 69 in a couple of months and if I don't do it now, it just might not get done. What I neglected to mention in my previous post is that I do have to justify my "excesses" to my dear financial manager and best pal
Dean
Couple of stories. Nothing to do with resos. Expensive or otherwise.
I met a guy several years ago who worked for Raytheon as an engineer and got in on the ground floor of a little start-up internet company - Ebay. Found himself worth over $250 million. Bought 2 large, side-by-side, ocean-front houses in Manhattan Beach (expensive Los Angeles area) for many millions. I asked him, "Why do you need 2 houses?"
He said, "Oh, I don't NEED them. I just WANTED them."
Couldn't argue with that.
Another time I was in Creede, Colorado with friends for an event. An heiress to the Standard Oil fortune was there. Reportedly worth some $500 mil. She had flown down from the ranch in Montana she was renting for the summer. Didn't have what she wanted to drink at the local saloon so she sent her plane to Denver which returned stocked with cases of Dom Perignon.
But her real story revolved around a Corvette purchase. She told the salesman she wanted to buy it with her American Express card. Salesman said he'd have to call and check. Came back, so the story goes, and said American Express had told him, "She can buy the car with her card. In fact, she can buy the dealership with her card if she wants."
If anyone here has that kind of money, I'm available for adoption.
I don't think there's any kind of moral to the stories. But there certainly are folks for whom making a purchase doesn't "hurt" at all, no matter what the item is. I'm not sure they still understand the value of the "little things", like houses and cars.
For most of us here, the value of a beautiful reso is obvious. And when we find ourselves with the means and opportunity, and pull the trigger, we are overjoyed. Don't remember too many threads about, "Bought this Scheerhorn/Meredith/Clinesmith (or whatever) and have been bored with it ever since."
Bob G did nail it... but sometimes, if you are really lucky, you can find a builder who is making instrumets as nice as any very expensive luthier at a better value. Can't have too may reso's :)
"Life is tough, but it's tougher if you're stupid!"
John Wayne, American
Agreed Trapper
"I shall pass through this world but once, any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not deter or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again" Stephen Grellet
"Two things in this world are infinite: the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe" Albert Einstein
"Quando Omni Flunkus Moratiti" - "If all else fails, play dead" Possum Lodge Motto
It only takes one significant life event to understand that always looking ahead and waiting for someday may never happen. If buying an instrument makes you happy even if you are not at THAT SKILL LEVEL, whatever that means, you owe it to yourself to live in the moment occasionally. Someday may never come, and you don't want your last comment to be, I WISH I HAD DONE THAT.
For what it is worth.
Bob Hill
I think Bob's just put it perfectly. My motivation is not knowing if I'll be able to afford it in future, so I figure if I get set now they'll be there for life. I'm in a very lucky position at the moment, but after having seen lots of my friends lose their jobs over the past year I'm stocking up on everything I can.
Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. (Abe Lincoln)
I bought my R-body Scheerhorn after just a couple of lessons. Still don't play well enough to justify it or the stable of high-end instruments that followed it, but I've broken even or thereabouts with all my horsetrading, and had fun doing it. The present market notwithstanding, good instruments hold value, and are a safer place to have $$ socked away than with some mutual fund.
Chris - be careful what you wish for re. adoption. As someone far cleverer than me put it, "to understand God's opinion of money, look at who He gave it to"!
"It's a fine line, really, between clever and stupid." -David St. Hubbins