Looking to buy a Zygmuntowicz violin
I am looking to buy his violin if anyone has one for sale. Please send me your contact information. thank you Tweet
Replies (69)
Why don 't you save yourself a substantial sum of money and look for another good maker?
So Allen: Are you collecting or are you looking for a player's tool? I think one of the reasons that players seek out a Zyg is the ability to commission one to their tastes.
Fortunately, there are names like mine that you can deal with. Only need 3 different letters.
Or you could just use "Sam Z." for that other guy.
Does anyone know how it's pronounced?
But from looking at this post, seems it's just someone trying to flip an instrument for cash. Otherwise, shouldn't they be asking "where do I go try one to see if I like it?", or maybe "what makers make similar instruments?"
By the way:
https://www.violinist.com/directory/bio.cfm?member=SamZyg
... just adding to the anti viola bashing thread ;-)
Oh no, it really was a violin, and awarded by the Violin Makers Association of... well, maybe mostly international amateurs around that competition in Arizona...
Don, congrats and chapeau, I didn't know! As my heart beats mostly for the viola, I'd love to try that one! If only California wasn't that far from Central Europe...
Zig-moon-toh-veech
though it's kind of in-between mun and moon, and the toh is a shorter vowel sound than the full letter "O".
If you think Polish is hard to pronounce, you should try English.
well... technically...
Sorry if you didn't understand that clearly.
And I'm 14, so it definitely just be that I'm stupid.
Edit: corrected the spelling my phone messed up...
Now if anyone knows who the future Zyg is... caching!
Haven't held one of his instruments in my own hands, but I'd really be curious about what a top player might find by comparing a Zyg to a Spliden, Burgess, Götting, Scolari, Klimke or whatever, in addition to a few great makers I happen to know in person like Schleske, Schütz, or Fauler (to add one female, at least).
Years back, probably the most sought after modern maker in the US was Sergio Peresson. At the end of his life, he had a waiting list and stopped taking orders for instruments because he was in such high demand. A bunch of people in the Philadelphia Orchestra used his instruments, Jacqueline du Pre recorded the Elgar Concerto on one of his cellos, and Eugene Fodor used a Peresson for the majority of his concerts. I'm not sure what he sold his instruments for, but I do know you can now get one of his violins for under $40,000.
Sure some of SZ's instruments sell for close to or a little above 100K due to the Isaac Stern spike, but an instrument, or any asset, at the end of the day, is only worth what the buyer is willing to offer. I can say that the desk that my laptop sits on is worth $350,000, but will I find someone to buy it? The instrument market is very small and illiquid, unlike the stock market or real estate.
Of course, they're a good investment tool for a soloist because they help add value every time you perform (if you sell more seats because you play on a strad instead of a modern instrument, for example).
Ultimately, the best to "invest" in a violin is to put down the cash for either an old Italian or a high-grade modern, then loan it to some aspiring soloist who you hope eventually becomes the real deal. Or alternatively, by from a maker who you believe will do the same.
Speaking from financial perspective, violins are anti-productive as assets. They take a lot of money to keep in good condition, including insurance. Plus they have to be played to keep up sound and value. They are by-and-large non-fungible except for a rare few makers. Investing in violins is more similar to investing in art than investing in music (though along these same lines, it's possible instruments have a utilitarian value in enabling money laundering).
But hey, for ME, one particular random guy on the internet, I hope the good moderns stay low in value for quite some time. Need to get me an instrument for the long haul, and finding moderns to try is proving to be a difficult task.
I find the idea of people who invest in violins offering their instruments to 'aspiring soloists' rather funny. What if these soloists don't feel like being investors' work horses?
That's the bargain. Got money? You can buy what you want. Don't have money? Hope for a loaner.
I think it would be incredibly hard to have to rely upon a loaner for one's profession. But, scraping together enough money to purchase a high quality instrument is impossible for most (I imagine).
Uhhhh....
I don't argue the basic premise--that violins are generally not a good financial investment--but I have to wonder whether Erik is old enough to have lived through either the last Great Recession or the Tech crash of 2000. Or the big recession of the early 80s.
Do NOT assume that returns for the last 10 years will continue. We used to assume that a savings account "should" generate 5-6%. Eventually, sooner rather than later, we will have a recession and for many reading this it may be their first. Be careful what assumptions you make concerning your investments...
6%-7% is the "safe" number one can expect, on average, over many years, if choosing a high quality large cap ETF that simply follows the market and doesn't try to beat it.
With that said, stocks sometimes go through long recessions where selling them would mean a huge loss, so obviously the 6-7% wouldn't apply if you're forced into selling at a bad time.
If you take a gamble on one maker, price could go up could go down. Stocks/Bonds/Cash/ETF/Real Estate allows you to properly diversify based on your risk tolerance.
“Investing” in a violin one doesn’t actually play makes no financial sense.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/11/24/financial-instruments
And that's much more liquidatable at any point in that period, plus it doesn't have the risk of getting stolen or the costly insurance premium that goes along with owning a physical object that's so valuable.
Plus, that requires a much more substantial lump sum minimum investment, where a person can decide to buy however much $$$ value of ETFs that they can afford. You can't exactly buy "3 shares of a strad."
I suppose a strad collection isn't a bad way for a super-millionaire to diversify their portfolio, but for anyone with less riches, ETFs are way better than violins.
BTW, if a major market such as the one in the US crashes, the art/instrument market will for sure crash
as well because institutions/foundations/rich individuals will have to liquidate their assets to pay bills.
As recently as 10 years ago, millions walked away from their houses which are as tangible as assets can get.
Of course if you were a player, you can still play, which certainly counts a lot, but not in a financial sense.
It should be obvious to everyone that if the economy recovers so does the financial market as it did from the subprime crisis ten years ago.
But Lyndon, you investing in violins makes sense because they're part of your business. Just as a soloist might invest in a good violin that they plan on performing with.
But we're talking about someone who's planning on buying one violin and just sitting on it to accrue value. Is it really your impression that this makes more sense than ETFs? Your friend's father must not have had diversified assets if he lost everything. Either that or he panicked and sold at the bottom of the market, which is the worst thing you can do. ETFs are naturally diversified, since they have a little bit of everything. And the fund managers are always trying to optimize the blend. Deaspite this, their expense ratio is very low, so it's just a very safe option for long term investment. Nothing wrong with investing in violins if you plan on "flipping" them relatively quickly as in your case, just as a clothing store should probably invest in buying merchandise, but the "sit-and-forget" strategy just doesn't seem like a good idea with violins if growing wealth is the goal.
Personally, I don't quite understand the psychology behind a wealthy person buying a Stad and loan it away. You get better return in $ if you buy an apartment block and rent them out, or invest in the stock market. If their motive is to support musician, then why not making grants to help them income-wise?
The article was published in 2008, and covered a span of 28 years (1980 - 2008). During that period, a $200k investment in a Strad grew to $3 million. A $200k investment at 7% interest compounded annually would have only gone to $1.3 million.
The vast wealth inequality in the world has been partially the cause of the high inflation in the prices of fine art. Inflation in the prices of high-end fine art objects has vastly outpaced consumer inflation. There are a very few people with massive amounts of money to spend competing with each other to buy the world's fine art.
The best reason to own an instrument or piece of art is that you use it to earn a living, or just like having it around. Essentially, those are your dividends, and in the latter case they are immune to inflation and untaxed.
The problem is that when people talk up the market, they always seem to chose specific beginning and end points. In other words, they cherry-pick a time period that confirms their point ("confirmation bias," anyone?). You can do the same thing for real estate or violin valuations: just a pick some period of time that makes your point. This works in hindsight, but one can't know at any given time where you are in the cycle when you invest, and when you might have to get out. I'm not totally ant-market--just wary of what is possible. We rarely see it coming (even the experts).
"What sets the purchase price of a violin'?"
It's not celestial navigation. People sell violins for whatever they think they can get for them. It's a two-way street: the price may vary depending on how well educated the buyer is. How desperate is the seller?
Does the dealer have too many violins in stock? Many buyers think their item, whatever it is, "should" be worth more than it is. Or they hate the idea that they're not making anything on it, so they'll desperately keep selling it for the same price.
I know a musician that has been trying to sell an old Italian viola, and can't stand the thought of lowering the price--she thinks it "should" be worth X amount. And so it has just sat, year after year, in a succession of shops.
"People sell violins for whatever they think they can get for them."
______________________
Sometimes that's true, and other times it is not. With a wait-list which may exceed my life expectancy, I could probably get away with charging much more than I do. That doesn't happen to be my schtick.
Not everyone in my business is a total money-grubbing whore. ;-)
You say that like it's a bad thing...
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