We have thousands of human-written stories, discussions, interviews and reviews from today through the past 20+ years. Find them here:
Price versus value
Hi all,As a general ballpark idea, at what price point for violin and for bow do you stop getting a lot of improvement and are just paying for provenance?
I kind of assume for bow it is around the 15 mark? And for violins I assume it would be around the 40k mark?
Replies (36)
The value of a violin is complicated because it can be approached from different perspectives. As a dealer or collector, it’s more about condition and provenance as well as reputation of the maker. If you’re a player, you of course want something that sounds good, but you have to consider whether you want to be able to resell it later and whether you want to treat the instrument partly as an investment that can appreciate.
I think the best course is to start with a budget and then see what you can get for it.
The simple answer to your question is the price at which they get better depends on you. Provenance adds an intangible amount to the price.
If you look around you can find a video of the wonderful NC fiddler Tommy Jarrell playing the Betts at the Library of Congress. He plays a bit then professes that he likes his fiddle better, a Germanic trade fiddle with metal 2 on a plate tuners. A Strad was of no use to him, and he sounded just like Tommy on both.
These peaks, such as the marriage of figaro by Mozart, are truly lofty. Such ones also exist in instruments as well.
In a broad sense, once we surpass the price of a highly skilled luthier of today, fewer people may be able to distinguish the difference. I think this is what the original poster is trying to get at. However, there is a difference, and its value is nearly infinite, as a person would say the moon is nearly infinitly more valuable than a pebble.
Thus, this threashold says more about the person who sets it, than it does about the objects being examined.
Example 1: You buy a violin from a contemporary maker at the maker’s price. Eventually you decide to sell the violin, at which time you discover that you can’t get anything near what you paid back. The maker set the price high but the violin will not be worth that amount in your lifetime (or perhaps ever). You’ve gotten trapped with a violin you can’t afford to trade or sell unless you take a big loss. You paid the price but don’t get the value.
Example 2: You buy an old violin from a private seller at the price set by the seller. After a few years you decide you want something else. The seller is not operating an official business and will not take the violin back. When you go to shops, you find that it was not worth what you paid when you bought it, it is not worth that now, and it won’t appreciate to that point any time soon. Perhaps the violin is of a similar age to valuable violins by more reputable makers, but it does not realistically command the price you paid anywhere else. You’re stuck selling at a loss or stashing it away for decades in the hope that some day it will be worth enough to get you out of the hole or provide a small windfall to your kids. You paid the price but didn’t get the value. Maybe you will…some day.
Example 3: You bought an old violin from a shop at the price they set. After a few years you decide to sell it or trade it. When you return to the shop you find that they won’t take it back, they won’t take it in trade, or they won’t give much in trade for it. They may say something like “The price for these violins just hasn’t stayed at the same level where they were when you bought it,” which means “We charged you way too much for it and the market has never reached that level, but we’re going to try to convince you that the market that has increased the value of just about everything else that’s old has somehow worked in the opposite manner in this case and you’ve bought a tulip at the height of the mania. Sorry!” If you take it to other shops, they will also refuse to take it or the offer will be much lower than you’d like, as the price they’re willing to pay you will be determined by what they can pay for something similar elsewhere. This may lead you to be unfairly biased against shops; one took you in with a fancy website, oily salesmen, or a fancy building or showroom, and the other brought you back to reality. You end up angry at both because you paid the price but didn’t get the value, and now you’re determined to only buy from online sellers or private sellers, in which case you may end up in another bad situation and determine that the entire violin business is crooked.
You get value for the price you pay if you buy well. A significant part of the market hinges on the hope of finding something that’s underpriced so that its actual value can be realized to the buyer’s benefit. This happens frequently enough to sustain the market.
When selling, buyers want the best deal. Usually this means a price below similar instruments, or a better instrument that may not have peers, at a lesser price. It is usually most diffocult to sell a decent instrument for a decent price, as there are so many such instruments.
I’ve recently bought two very decent violins from private owners. I don’t know if they made back their money, probably not, but they said I was the first shopper, and both violins were scraped up quickly.
Music camps and music festivals can be like swap meets. You might get dickered down from your asking price, but at least you can get a sale. Once, at a festival, I was looking at a white violin for sale. Not knowing if I could do a good job of coating it, I walked away to consider it. A few minutes later, because the price was so good, I went back to buy it.
It was gone.
I’ve had several people try to buy my custom made ukulele, it’s not for sale. Not for any price, as long as I can still play it. But that’s an emotional thing, I do not want to shop for another one.
But maybe there’s a glut of decent instruments. It’s easy to walk into a violin store and buy something decent. It’s harder if you want to buy from a private owner (one has to shop harder) so as to dicker on price, which can be fun.
It reminds me of the famous Jewish story where the sage Hillel is challenged by an unbeliever to summarize the Torah while standing on one foot. Hillel's response was: Do not do unto others that which is hurtful to you. The rest is commentary. Now go and study.
There are some who want to cut out all the emotional or subjective aspects of the process and approach violin sales with a focus on data. This approach is more of an attempt to treat violins with a certain suspicion toward aesthetics or the “wow” factor of the maker or the way the violin plays. You might say its goal is to eliminate subjectivity in the process and consider the item based on some idea of science. On the other hand, there are also some who want to throw all external considerations to the wind. This is the approach where the predominating advice is to “ignore labels, prices, appearances, condition, age, and maker and just play everything you can to see what you like best.” This approach is the polar opposite of the former because it discards objectivity to embrace complete subjectivity. I don’t think it’s advisable to go to either extreme. It’s not a defect of the process for it to contain elements that are both objective and subjective. As the buyer, you have to weigh the various considerations in the balance to make a decision that you have a good chance of liking in the future.
Value in an investment sense, which includes getting back what you paid in if you sell, is very much about provenance. However a violin with great provenance can play terribly.
If I buy a violin for a price I can afford, and play it for thirty years, getting great tone, responsiveness, music and enjoyment out of it...do I care if at the end it sells for not that much? Probably I do if I bought it as a massive investment. If I bought it at a low-stress price point to play, I may care much less. I don't think this is the kind of value the poster was asking about.
I think the relationship between price and playing-affecting characteristics (set up, workmanship, tone, responsiveness, dynamic range for the violin), to the extent that it exists at all, is geometric rather than linear for the entire range. So if you could imagine that it were possible to enumerate increments of playing quality, they might (perhaps 10 years ago, last time I looked at new instruments much) be priced something like 500, 2000, 4-6000, 12000, 20k, 50k, 100k, 200k.
But it's actually an interesting question whether there is _any_ relationship between the price point and playing characteristics?
I suspect (without firsthand knowledge) that the best Strad is wildly better than the best recent workshop violin, by any musician's subjective value function. But what about the other possible comparisons? (And is that even right? The best modern workshop instruments are really very good.)
Let's make some rough bands of price ranges. Modern Chinese and European workshop instruments. Century-old European workshop instruments. Modern American or Italian luthier-made instruments. Old Italians.
Price is bounded by the band. The best Chinese workshop instruments won't (I think) sell for > $20k USD. The worst Strad might well not sell for under $1M. In all likelihood, I would far rather give a concert or audition on the best Chinese workshop instruments than the worst Strad.
But within each band, let's say there's a worst instrument, median instrument, and best instrument. They will be distributed within that band's price range about accordingly (due to economics factors).
But...how different are the ranges in double-blind, absolute terms? Is the best Strad better than the best modern American or Italian instrument in a way that can be verified by performer, or listener, if they don't know what's being played?
This has been tested a bunch of times and generally the answer seems to be "kinda mostly no - a few expert listeners may be able to pick out a Strad vs a great modern, but most can't, including expert players who are doing the playing."
But I'm not aware of any controlled tests of this sort of the bands lower than Strad and modern top-tier luthiers. Can a pro differentiate between a good older instrument that isn't a Strad, and a good modern workshop instruments?
I think we all tend to assume the quality bands go something like this (left being worse, right being better):
###### workshop
...####### luthier
........####### old pro instrument
.............############### old Italian (and maybe the most brilliant modern luthiers)
But is that right? Or is it more like this?
######... workshop
############### luthier
######################### old pro instrument
###################################### old Italian
?
Or is it even like this?
############ workshop
############ luthier
############ old pro
############ old italian
Can anyone on this list who has had the chance to do expert-level playing of a fair sample of this list comment? I don't count as an expert player (at least not pro level), and have only played workshop instruments, a couple of modern luthier instruments, and two older Italian instruments more in the "older pro" class than the Strad and Del Gesu class. For me, I'm not at all confident I could tell the few modern luthier instruments I've played from a Pietro Guarneri or Gagliano - though I had only a few minutes on most of them, under non-ideal circumstances. (And a pro might have gotten differences I didn't.)
Maybe more interestingly from the value-seeking perspective, is it only the best instruments that vary? Strads are valuable because the best are (reportedly-I've certainly never played one) amazing. But is an average Strad better than an average Vuillaume or Lupot? Is an average Vuillaume better in a double-blind test than an average $6k modern workshop instruments, or apprentice modern luthier instrument?
Complicating matters is the difficulty of recording instruments. I have a Del Gesu pattern modern workshop instruments that, to me, sounds an awful lot like recordings of Del Gesus and the stars align (good bow, my posture is perfect, etc). More precisely, it sounds like what I can hear of real Del Gesus from my own audio equipment, and whatever was used to record them, etc. There are differences in things like the consonant sounds at the start of the note, and the way it blooms, where I think I can hear the influence of the pattern in common. But...if I were actually playing a Del Gesu in my room, would it sound 1000x better than the recording I am hearing on my speakers? I suspect so, given that when I record my own instruments, the sound is far worse than what I hear when I play them. (Listeners have confirmed this.)
You can remove the time factor but not the name factor. There's definitely a hierarchy among living makers. And don't forget that when you buy a violin that's entirely new, the tone may change over the first few months to years of its life. Often people speak of "playing in" the violin, and you can buy devices that vibrate the violin to simulate playing! All of that rests on what I consider to be an entirely unproven and unjustified bias -- that "playing in" invariably improves the instrument.
Sometimes people are concerned that a maker's work isn't consistent, and this deters them making a commission. But the best makers will just sell the violin to the next person on the list if you don't buy it -- unless the next person has asked for special features or tonal characteristics that "your" violin doesn't have. So I think the risk is low, but what you can't change is the length of their queue. That's one advantage of a maker like Burgess because he's won so many awards that they don't even let him compete any more. That speaks not only to quality but consistency in his work. But, everyone else knows that, too. And, in the end, you pay for that unwritten guarantee, and possibly dearly.
I also have to say that I think a lot of people, when shopping for a violin, care too much about what their friends will think of their purchase. I remember someone telling me I got ripped off because I bought my daughter an Eduard Reichert (1890s German workshop) violin from Jan Hampton (Richmond VA) for $3500 about ten years ago. Well it's my money! And by the way it's a really nice-sounding and well-playing violin, and her teacher (who is also my teacher) said so, too, and in blind tests with various listeners it performed well against $15000 violins that I had on loan from Jane Kapeller (also in Richmond), and my daughter loves this violin and played it all through college and still plays it. But you know perfectly well that if you go to a shop and buy a violin for $20000 made by X, that as soon as you tell your friends they're going to google the prices of violins made by X to see if you got ripped off. This is why nobody has hobbies any more, because they've become so competitive that they're not fun any more. You can't just collect coins for fun because it doesn't impress your friends.
I’m returning it. It’s not really what I need anyway.
Maybe I’ll buy a desk. I’m tired of using a table that’s too high.
I don’t mind being told I made a mistake. But nobody likes being told she was ripped off, whether it’s a violin, a car, or a chair.
Win some, lose some. I don’t like shopping.
Pardon my blowing off steam.
If nothing blows your mind, up your budget, or keep waiting for the right one to show up.
Even then, every now and then you'll encounter a violin or two that sound extraordinary out of any price range (and mostly way out of what you can afford).
Unless you're collecting works by specific maker, which you may or may not end up liking it as a player, you're better off going back to the first point above.
"Maybe I’ll buy a desk. I’m tired of using a table that’s too high." Depending on the material, the legs can be sawed off. A bit like sawing the last couple of inches off your fingerboard to make your violin baroque. You could call your sawed-off table your "baroque table."
I often give advice when asked about value that’s based on the reality of the violin market. That also excludes personal enjoyment because the market is dictated by overall preference or that of individuals held in high regard. I’m never asked “Will I enjoy playing this violin?” but rather “Is this a good buy for me?”
All that being said, I personally believe that it is entirely reasonable to buy a violin for the purpose of enjoyment, excluding the possibility of financial benefit. In that sense, one might treat the violin like a finite resource that will be durable enough to last a playing career but will not necessarily have any market value in the end. Buying from this perspective means finding personal value in the use of the violin or any financial gain from the use of the violin for paid performances. One need not buy with a primary focus on market value now or in the future.
However, I do think that, even though it’s reasonable to purchase for personal enjoyment, one should at least be aware of the other factors. The best choice to me is one made confidently after having been well informed. Questions asked online can’t be answered with the personal playing preference of the individual in mind, so they gravitate more toward overall trends or a smattering of personal opinions that may or may not be useful or reasonable.
I kind of assume for bow it is around the 15 mark?"
And no-one takes Ory up on this?
15$ or 15K?
Either figure is insanity.
It's much easier to justify spending what you want to spend for your very expensive toy (or tool, if you're a professional) if it's also an investment.
It’s just a reality of the violin world that people don’t always end up with a violin that makes them happy. I know several players who have never been happy with their instruments. Sometimes it happens because someone tries a colleague’s instrument and loves it and then commissions one from the same maker, only to find that it’s not at all like the one they liked. Sometimes it’s the result of a purchase steered by someone else. Sometimes it’s a case where the violin sounds nice initially but becomes disappointing after a couple years. It can even be as simple as a violin sounding great in one room and awful where it ends up being played.
Sometimes it’s that the player has an idea of the sound they want in their head, but nothing that they buy seems to fit the bill. I remember very well a customer who came in regularly at the first shop where I worked. She had spent the majority of her career playing a violin she didn’t really love and had always wanted something more. Her husband told her that she deserved to have something that made her happy, so he gave her some serious money to put into finding the right violin. Over the course of several years she bought a number of fine old Italian violins. With each purchase she would come to the shop and give the best restorer carte blanche to get the violin into its best shape. Each time she picked up the newly restored violin after spending thousands, she’d play it for a few months and have it adjusted over and over. Each time she’d sell the violin and buy another because it just didn’t work for her. I had a conversation with the restorer about it and he told me that the problem was that she wanted an old Italian violin but she also wanted it to sound like a new violin and she wasn’t willing to compromise in either direction. One of the violins she gave up got a girl into the most coveted studio in the country a couple years later.
There are all kinds of reasons why a violin ends up being traded in or sold. The violin is something that evokes great passion and mystique even when it’s not played, so it’s no surprise that players can have emotional reactions to instruments—both positive and negative.
On a good day I like the sound of my Breton, but it depends on the room. So does my teacher, although her Italian loan-violin is clearly better, and at her house I never like the sound of my violin. But compared with an 18th c English violin my Breton sounds horrible. Yet I suspect that 18th c English violin will only be suited to Boccherini in a Palm Court and will never project like mine will.
I seriously wonder about someone who keeps blaming the violin for the lack of beautiful sounds it makes.
I don’t like many of the sounds my violins make, but with my two best ones, I don’t fault the fiddles.
No violinist is infallible. Not one.
I wonder if this customer did the same thing with the chairs in her house.
And no, the customer is NOT always right.
These days, it seems to spend the majority of its time as merely a very good violin, not a great one, and I feel like I'm constantly chasing the right adjustment. I want to replace it with a contemporary violin that will behave more predictably, but I don't have the time and willingness to pursue a commission right now -- nor do I necessarily want the gamble that a commission represents.
(I suppose I'm a passive searcher, hoping that someday a perfect instrument will just materialize. I did buy my Vuillaume through a serendipitous appearance, as it was being looked at by a student in my teacher's studio.)
The player in my story is an excellent player, and none of the violins ever sounded bad, nor did her playing of them. It was really that the violins didn’t have the particular attack or response that she was looking for. She would often play a few selected passages to test them. She wanted a certain crispness of response, especially in light and fast spiccato passagework. The violins she was playing were excellent, but she just wasn’t happy with the way that they responded in those conditions, and as someone who spent hours a day with a violin under her ear and needed to be ready for solos, she was exacting in her search. After all, she had been using her regular violin all along and could always fall back on it as a safety. The point of her search was to find The One. It was deliberately selective because she had the luxury of being able to set things up that way. I didn’t know her well enough to know how she organized her furniture.
About commissions, the catch to getting one from a maker with a great reputation is that they aren’t very easy to come by, so in many cases your best chance of finding one is to get in line with the maker or to watch auctions for one to appear. If a player is happy with their violin from a contemporary maker, they aren’t typically going to be willing to part with it. If the maker is fairly consistent as a workman and you have the chance to try a few examples, you can get a reasonable idea of what to expect unless the maker changes working methods. A maker with a solid waiting list may well be willing to offer a violin to another customer if the one meant for you doesn’t mesh well and you can try another. Commissioned violins also afford you a unique opportunity to have a bit of involvement in the process of the violin’s making and a direct relationship with the maker. It doesn’t make the violin more valuable on the market, but it may mean more to you as the owner in its emotional appeal.
What does provenance mean? It means (a) the maker is known to be someone who makes good violins, (b) you can "prove" that the violin was made by that person, and (c) you can "prove" that the violin was maybe played by someone who ought to be a selective buyer.
Here I'm thinking mostly of insurance appraisals. I had my violin and viola appraised at Seman Violins in Skokie. I'm pretty sure the value was tied closely to the fact that the violin was made by Wojciech Topa and the viola by Daniel Foster. The appraisals were $18k and $14k, respectively, and if anything, insurance appraisals are inflated. Without the "provenance" (in this case knowing the maker), how does the dealer make this evaluation? By playing them? No. The proprietor at Seman did tell me that he thought my Topa violin was a "fine example of the maker's work." Maybe that added a couple of thousand? Who knows. Maybe when pricing instruments to sell, dealers take the actual quality (tone, workmanship, etc.) into greater consideration.