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Machold goes under

From Bruce Berg
Posted May 14, 2012 at 11:02 PM

This is an article about the demise of one of the most well known string instrument dealers.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/the-case-of-disgraced-stradivari-dealer-dietmar-machold-a-832274.html

PS I read the article and wonder where I can buy a realistic fake yellow Rolls-Royce within my meagre price-range.

that'll work

Yep. I refuse to buy any more Strads.

That is what it's come to. I wonder what percentage of sales in the last 10 years have been to players versus investors. Small and continually shrinking would be my guess. A couple of generations ago players could afford a lot of these instruments, but no more.

The article doesn't talk about the people who had instruments on consignment with Machold. Did he take care to only rip off banks, or did families lose money trying to sell Grandfather's old Guarneri?

My teacher/friend/mentor insists that Strads etc. are truly great but when he plays a cheap fiddle and makes it sound like a million dollars I just laugh. I am sure he is right an I am sure it only makes a great fiddler a greater fiddler.

Cheers Carlo

Machold must have enjoyed the challenge of playing bankers and customers for fools, he did it for such a long time. It just goes to show its who you know, not just what you know, that gives you the edge. For any lowlier a person, simply borrowing 100k to buy a decent violin would erupt a paper trail thick enough to stranglehold your house, land and family for generations, missing just one interest repayment would cause cardiac forfeiture of it all. And to think Machold just went to each bank and waved a couple of self appraised 'cheapies' around on a promise to get a several million euro is just mind boggling. There wouldn't be a rock big enough on the entire earth for all involved to crawl under. Blimey!

I can attest to that. When I was a schoolboy in Bristol in the '50s I passed by a violin shop each day on my way home from school. The shop is still there, doing a thriving business - but it's now called Cremona House. Over a period of several weeks one summer there was an Amati cello on display in the window (nobody would dare do that today!). I don't know which variety of Amati it was, but the price on the label was £400. In the '50s that instrument would have been within the reach of a professional cellist, or an amateur in middle management or one of the professions. All I could do was to drool.

Oh wait, that's violins, themselves that should be varnished with a brush. OK, back to tar for the dealers! Just kidding. Yes, there are honorable violin dealers.

More here about this case:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303360504577410050235169664.html

I had to do dictation in aural skills. It was torture.

As long as he only cheats on bankers I am ok with it.
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That doesn't speak well for the state of your morals.

but it does speak to simons impression of the bankers morals
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Precisely, which is ignorance.

There are approximately the same percentage of "evil violinists" and "good violinists" in the world as there are "evil bankers" and "good bankers" (or evil and good horticulturists and horse trainers for that matter).

It's just that bankers are a current favored soup du jour scapegoat, especially by those who possess absolutely zero financial knowledge and thus are easily led by the nose on such matters.

The services provided by violin dealers is not so critical.

Bankers and their clients have been taken to the cleaners time after time, based on speculative fevers. Chastising bankers because they may facilitate greed is an easy way to overlook the basic fact that they are responding to someone else's desires.

Financial bubbles will always occur. There is too much money to be made from fools to put a stop to basic human desires and actions. The question remains whether the current pricing of early violins is a bubble which will pop; while it's a centuries-long phenomenon, the limited supply along with the incresed population of the planet and its increasing wealth, might be enough to continue the process until they all turn to dust.

Fortunately for future generations (should they come to pass) there seems to be a number of talented modern makers whose instruments might command attention in years to come.

Also possible: musicians will fall into the level of disrepute that they occupied for so many centuries, perhaps not undeservedly; old fiddles will end up in museums, or burned by the right-thinking populace, righteously offended by the excesses of the frivolous.