Lowball offers on Reverb

I've done this very thing and I still get lowball offers.  I have something up there now, and someone just offered me 50% of the "buy it now" price.  Super decline.

-09

I just had a guy offer under my asking price for some Hi-Hats (only under by $20)

I explained they cost way more new and he agreed that my price was reasonable and would pay it.
He asked if I could keep them a few days whilst he moved house - I said all right why not (I'm a friendly chap)

He contacted me yesterday and said can I pick them up and will I take what he originally offered!! (not the price we agreed)

I told him sorry, they have sold.

He later messaged back to say, no they haven't they're still for sale.

I didn't reply, he'll just have to sit down quietly in a corner with a mug of coco and work out why he doesn't now own my hi-hats.

I think if Reverb is “artificially” able to raise prices, and the unit sells for the higher price, it’s more accurate to say that Reverb has succeeded in increasing the demand for the (used) product.

People in the cities historically known for recording studios, etc. have probably always had an active market for used gear (NYC, Nashville, etc.) with enough buyers/sellers for a fairly slowly changing equilibrium price for a piece of used gear. Reverb, once confidence was established, allowed for much larger market “in the boonies” for a particular item so prices rose enough even to compensate for larger fees. This would raise local prices too.

That being said, I make every effort to buy used gear locally at mutually beneficial lower price that avoids shipping, fees, sales tax, etc.

On Reverb, using the “offer” feature will entice quicker sales at whatever “the market will bear”; but hard to avoid lowball offers without setting a price floor. In my view, the existence of a price floor in a system would encourage buyers to try to find it by offering low amounts. Maybe Reverb is just operating the way they intended? :-)

EDIT: And since Reverb gets a percentage of the sales price, as far as I understand (I’ve spent a couple thousand on the site, never sold anything) it’s in their best interest for prices to be high. I need to use RGO classifieds more!

No. That gear always sits. They’re mostly just losers with warehouses and gear resellers trying to rip people off for the most part. If you offer what a piece will SELL for rather than SIT for minus the cost of repair they will turn you down until they find someone gullible enough to rip off.

Facebook marketplace is a bunch of broken cheap shit people should be paying you to haul off to Best Buy electronic recycling for the most part.

100-1000 off a condition indeterminant used item that optically looks okay is not a deal! These leeches are not measuring them or the people using them and they still work for them. Most 10-20 year old plus gear it is almost surely broken and has a repair cost that will run you at least a bench fee + parts + shipping. The points of failures add up and they’re not telling you what is spotty. They don’t even know because that’s why it was traded in.

Reverb and used gear resellers who aren’t fixing the items are LEACHES.

Need an "ouch" emoji."

My experience exactly....and dishonest salesmen. A waste of time...but GC corporate returns did refund my money quickly. It gets sent back to a centralized warehouse and then it probably gets serviced or wholesaled out somewhere.  The salesmen and their managers just want it off their local store's books and will tell you anything. 

I’ve seen gear from the 80s (Ashly compressor, namely) that had some sort of foam added back then, presumably to help minimize impact of vibration, etc. but by 2020 it had decomposed into a nasty gunk similar to that gray matter in appearance. Not sure if that console had same “feature”

I hate silly low balls, but I am totally guilty of doing them. I’ll see a piece I want that I know is slightly over priced. So I give an offer that I think is low, but not far off from where the price should be.  The hope is to get a response where the seller counters at a price closer to the bottom of what they are willing to sell the item for.  Then I can decide if the price is worth it, maybe counter for a little lower.  I can’t tell you how many pieces I’ve gotten that way for a decent price.

Now, I have gotten pieces that needed repairs though. When i got my Dan Alexander one of the channels didn’t work and I had to reach out and get a refund for the repair.  Luckily this seller was cool about it. I showed him the receipt from my tech, etc.  When I got my Pearlman TM1 it worked great for like a month, and then just crapped out. I had to send it to Dave twice. That one I lost money on to a degree, but that mic sounds ridiculously good, and even after the repairs is worth more than I bought it for, considering all the custom parts built in by Dave. 

I love getting stuff from the Guitar Center Used section.  You’ve got 30 days to return it. So if it comes and is broken, or not what I was really looking for, I drive to my local guitar center and bring it back. I’ve gotten quite a few mics at great prices this way. Some I even flipped and made money on. 

I had a look for giggles, noticed a lot of second hand equipment is as expensive or more so than retail. Remained baffled for 0.001 seconds, went back to looking at mixing desks I don't need..

Looptrotter 16ch modular console.. Think I might just go for it next year.

I know right.

When I was building my guitar pedal board just about every second hand pedal I saw was the same or slightly more than simply
buying the pedal new! - I thought that's really odd.

Well sometimes it was a little bit cheaper but only a little bit, I mean who buys a pedal for a few pounds/dollars/euros cheaper
when you get no guarantee and there's always a chance of it arriving smelling of smoked sausage!