TromboneChat

I sometimes see interesting horns on eBay that appear in different listings for the same horn (per the photos) and from differing sellers. Specifically, I see this a lot from sellers that indicate they are based in Japan. The prices usually don't align and may differ by a few dollars to a couple of hundred. These sellers all appear to have high ratings.

I'm curious about experiences from anyone who has purchased a horn on eBay that falls into this bucket (same horn, different seller, different price). They can't be too scammy or I think they would have been kicked off by now. The thing that bothers me the most is the differentiation in pricing. Anyone have any experience buying from one of these sellers? It would be great to get some tips and info from someone that has successfully, or unsuccessfully, made a purchase. I understand all the stuff about shipping, customs, etc. and that's not what I'm after. It would be great to know how to identify a legit seller. I would be open to some good seller IDs too.

Thanks!

I'm not sure exactly why they do this, but it usually works out. The only problem is I think they sometimes have the same horns for sale in Japan locally, and they'll sell there or won't be available otherwise sometimes.

I bought my Yamaha 8130 from such a seller and it took 5 attempts- the previous 4 (which were all different horns, by the way) were all cancelled by the seller and disappeared. I've had that happen on a couple other horns too. But since ebay has buyer protection, it's not a huge deal.

If you can, try and see if the same horn/listing is posted on Yahoo Japan Auction. With the exchange rate way in our favor, horns can be had for cheap. Even better if you know someone in Japan that can get it for you. That way you can cut out middleman services such as Buyee.

Yes, these all legit sellers in Japan. I have bought from all of them! They usually don't own the horn and (try to) acquire it after you buy it. So, perhaps 10% of the time, it is longer available and they apologize - usually saying it was damaged and they need to cancel the sale or some similar excuse. Getting it shipped can be slow but the shipping itself if usually first rate! You might receive a bill for some small-ish import fees, usually with FedEx, infrequently with other carriers.

Thanks for the replies. This provides some good insight. Tom's note about possibly not actually owning the horn seems like it might provide some explanation of using the same photos but different pricing per seller, and why Aidan experienced his issues. That's a different way of doing business I guess. I would be concerned that I might not get what's in the photos and may end up with a horn that's in poor shape. The decision to buy in most of these cases is based mostly on the visual representation.

I do feel a little better about possibly buying from one of these sellers. Again, much appreciated.

Be aware that they love to ship the horn in the case only, no packing material at all. Anything that doesn't come in a very good case is going to get some kind of damage. My 851 had a nice crunch in the bell, since it was shipped in a gig bag wrapped in bubble wrap.

My Yamahas in stock cases have all fared well.

I've bought a couple of horns from these Japanese sellers, and the horns have been excellent quality, very nicely priced, and delivery was amazingly fast. Do your due dilligence on any seller to be sure, but the ones I've used have worked out for me.

I think most of them are proxy buying the horns from Yahoo auction or Mercari. They set the price higher than the price of item or estimated price of the item(in case of auction). If the item is already sold in Japanese auction to other people and when they failed to acquire the item, they simply lie that the item is badly damaged and offer refund or other similar item. I had one incidence on ebay.
And there's a lot of items on ebay that had already ended some months ago at Yahoo auction or Mercari. I think the ebay sellers are simply too lazy to delete the ended item.

I just bought an 88H SGX from a Japanese seller like that may have done that, though I didn't see other listings, they didn't have very many photos of the horn, so I now wonder if they physically had it. They took almost two weeks to ship the horn, but it arrived in good shape and playing condition. I was just a bit sketched because the price had honestly been lower than I'd expect (but that's part of why I went forward) and because of how long they took to send it. There were hundreds to thousands of good reviews, though, so that helped too.

I wonder...

One might set up multiple user accounts and play some tricks with pricing. List an item on one account at a high price, then come along a few days later and list it at a somewhat more reasonable price (which still leaves room for plenty of profit). The idea is that a potential buyer sees the item offered for, say, $1000. Well, that price is too high. But a couple days later, the same item shows up for $650 and the potential buyer thinks "wow, that's almost half the price - I should jump on that". It's not going to work every time, but it doesn't cost the seller anything other than the few minutes needed to list the items.

JohnL wrote: ↑Thu Jan 23, 2025 8:24 pm One might set up multiple user accounts and play some tricks with pricing.

I think they are actually different sellers, and as I said before, I think they're simply proxy-buying things from Japan's auction sites. I think nowadays currency exchange rate of Dollar to Yen is very good for Japanese, so this kind of reselling business is prosfering. In Japan auction sites, it's even more cheaper, especially Yamaha horns. I acquired one of their flagship tenor model used, for 180000 yen, and it's around 1200 US dollar.