I spent a fair bit of time looking at guitars and misc instruments on eBay, bid on a few things, never bought anything. For one thing its essentially an American site, the prices are in U.S. dollars and I think lots of name-brand instruments are flowing from Canada into the American market because they sell for more there by the time you figure the 45% exchange rate clipping, shipping, and various duties and taxes we get to pay, than I would pay at a decent small-town Canadian store.

If you don't have to pay all those hidden costs--i.e., if you're in the States--it seems like a good place to buy $200 guitars for $100 or so, and of course a certain number of inexpensive instruments are good value, but it's impossible to know which ones. The collectibles that are identifiable by name and model almost never sell below the going rate for obvious reasons.

Usually any instrument with even a dubious claim to a famous name --"Martin Sigma", or the well-worn, usually inaccurate "Epiphone by Gibson" will be marketed as such.

One exception was an old "Ditson" mandolin, which I followed with considerable interest and even bid on. Ditson was a department store for which CF Martin manufactured instruments in the teens and twenties, and this was clearly one of their A-style mandolins, and THE SELLER DID NOT KNOW THIS. Bidders sure did though, it ended up fetching over $700 U.S. (a Martin A-style mandolin, any year, goes for about $500 at Elderly).

I don't know about eBay or online displacing real music stores, since most real music stores are learning fast that part of their business can be online sales. It's basically a sellers' market. I think about selling my stuff there, but I'm a little reluctant to turn into another "reverse carpetbagger".

Willie-O