Anyone buy/sell basses for $$ reguarly?

[canadian_man_44]

I do it for upgrades. I went from a MIM Fender Jazz, traded for a Squier fretless and an Ibanez plus $100. Turned around and sold both basses and bought a Washburn T25, which I then sold for a decent profit and picked up a mint USA Fender Precision Deluxe(60th)for $750. This is my keeper and I still had money left over after the purchase. Went out with that and bought a Fender Acoustic bass for $175 and sold it a week later for $260. Took this money and bought a 2 month old Squier Jazz Deluxe V for $250. I'm gonna play with this one for awhile and only sell if I can turn a little profit.

I also picked up an Austin bass for $70 which I turned around and traded for a $400 Acoustic. Sold another Acoustic for $175.

I don't do it for the money but rather to upgrade whatever I currently have....but it is addictive, so right now I'm looking for another great deal to turn a profit on.

 

[Lammchop93]

I do this quite often. I tend to buy a piece of gear, gig it for a month or so and get my fun out of it, then sell it for profit.

I intentionally buy it planning on reselling it for more, but I always like to have my fun with a new toy, so I keep them for a month or so.

I LOVE trading up too. I starting with a 1968 Traynor tube head that I bought for $80 and gave the guy a Behringer combo, and worked my way up to the Ric in my avatar! It's a lot of fun!

 

[pnut166]

I always have better luck trading gear than selling/buying. I can always trade up if what I have to offer is what someone else is looking for. Example: I traded a $30 pedal for a Peavey preamp, which I then traded for a nice T-20, which I then sold for $200. I got to try out some gear AND made 6x my money

 

[michael_atw]

If you look at the post that I quoted, he said he was only averaging $75 profit per unit and he thought it was good money. I was saying that I would want to make more than that for the hassle. The $150 you mention is a lot better.

I have done it in the past but I do tend to avoid EBay for purchases. A friend of mine and I did better at local auctions, local Craigslist and standing outside music stores and offering a few bucks more than the nothing that the store offered and/or buying for cash with no hold time on rent day. In the day, I liked EBay more for selling than for buying. Now I just don't like EBay.

Peace,
S

Oh don't get me wrong, I hate ebay's guts. The new seller update is a sham and they will kill themselves eventually. But where I am now living for the time being craigslist is empty seats (I live in eastern Maine) and music stores are literally hours away.

$75 per guitar is no problem for me; I guess it all depends on what people's definition of "parting out" is. I can buy a guitar, take the neck off a body (5 min of work), post them up (20 min), and mail both out (hour at most) and make $70 easy. I'd say that's pretty good. My greater concern is PERCENT profit, rather than an amount. If I can make $50 off a $100 Squier I'm happy (150% profit); but to make $50 off a $500 USA P-bass is not so much fun (110% profit). Some people make a humdrum about making $250 off an SVT or '78 P-bass but at the end of the day if I sell 5 Squiers at $50 a pop I've equaled that. Obviously I take what I can get though...so vintage basses are just as good to me as Squiers

Conversely, if "parting out" means taking every little screw out and stripping the guts from it...it's not worth it at all. I'll pop off Badass bridges and CS pickups when applicable but stock MIM pickups and USA jacks are a huge waste of time. I don't get how reliablefender doesn't go insane listing all of those tiny pieces on ebay.

When you can efficiently run the flips, then profit comes from forgotten/ignored areas.

 

[TheSuzie]

$75 per guitar is no problem for me; I guess it all depends on what people's definition of "parting out" is. I can buy a guitar, take the neck off a body (5 min of work), post them up (20 min), and mail both out (hour at most) and make $70 easy. I'd say that's pretty good.

Yeah, that is a different game than the one I played. Actually sounds pretty easy. I never did the parting thing. I shipped whole instruments, some of them expensive and also large items like PA gear. Much more time consuming to pack those sort of items properly. A Fender style neck or body is a lot easier and cheaper to pack and ship.

Peace,
S

 

[MNAirHead]

With the internet, I would never buy something I wouldn't want to gig...

Either it's a hardship, scam or someone who doesn't know how to use the internet.

I do snag all the great deals I can find.. play them for a while - set them up.. then let them go when I jammed packed.