Hi Gang. I stopped by an antique store that got my accordion at, and I saw an instrument that I have never seen before. It looked like a zither, with nasty old strings, some red, like the identifiers on a harp. I suppose zithers have these too? It was a hollow body with a sound hole that was slightly oval.

Anyway, what confused me was that at what seemed to be the side closest to one's body was a fret board for 5 strings. The fret wire came up about a quarter of an inch. All the strings had tuners like you would expect on a zither, that require a special tool to tune, except the five strings above the fret board. These 5 had tuning pegs, and below them, attached to the body of the instrument was what I think is a sterling silver guard. It reminded me of a lap steel guitar kind of thing.

I'm going to try to take a picture of it this afternoon.

What struck me was the fact I've never seen anything like this and the $140 price take. I did not count the # of strings, and there was not a single identifying mark anywhere on it. No labels or words of any kind. It was in great shape, good wood, solid... It has to be worth more than $140.

Any ideas?