Not all flutes, not even all new flutes, are ever worth buying at any price. $100 is a great price for a good used flute. Lots of flutes on eBay sell for $100 or under. Very, very few of these are worth buying. Let's start at the bottom of the pile and move upwards.
The worst flutes for sale on eBay are the Chinese imports. I'm not just talking about the obvious ones, with the poorly translated titles like "fair sounding lucky flute instrument" auctions from China. The same flutes are sold by American businesses who import these flutes by the thousand. Most of the "bankruptcy sales" and "80% off retail" listings are these flutes. All of the colored flutes fall into this category. These colored flutes, be they pink or blue or black or whatever, are all extremely low quality. Most of the listings which describe the flutes by year such as "2006 model" or "2007 model" are these flutes. (Real flutes are not like cars. They are not sold by model year.) For some reason they often come with "joint protectors", or little plastic caps that fit on the end of the tenons. Sometimes they are sold with grease for the joints. (This is unusual for the good brands). They will claim a normal retail value in the $600 range.
This is an exaggeration; they import these flutes from China for as little as $25 per flute. (Virtually all brands, even the good ones, list suggested retail values which no one expects to pay. Gemeinhardt lists their popular 2sp model for around $700 but the actual new price is around $330). The descriptions are suave with much html and they look quite professional. They will claim to be high quality and will say they are not the cheap imitations you have heard about, even though they are. They will say they are enormously popular in school band programs. (Band directors and flute teachers laugh at these flutes.) My favorite thing they say is that these flutes are "Teacher Approved." There is no teacher I know of who would recommend these flutes for their students. Even though they are made in China, they are not always shipped from China, but rather are sold from America. The sellers are often American Power Sellers with tons of very positive feedback.
People post feedback immediately upon receiving the flute in the mail. They open up the package, look at the shiny flute which they have no clue how to play and immediately send rave reviews to the seller's feedback account. A month later, when the flute literally falls apart, the buyers are unable to leave negative feedback because they already left positive feedback. When they do break, the warranties will be recently expired. And of course, these sellers never give anyone their phone numbers or email addresses, and never answer questions.
All true. If you read through some of the posts on this forum all this has been discussed several times. It is too bad we don't have something like a sticky post option on this board.
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I have read that article before on ebay. It is very well said. It really is a crime what some of these sellers are trying to sell and pass off as flutes on ebay!
As pointed out on the above link, one of the more serious problems with going out on a limb and discussing this most serious issue in public is the possibility of being slapped with a law suit for slander.
So how these comments are worded is very important at this point.
Unless you are the author of this article, you might want to be careful about cutting and pasting a large amount of info that you have not yourself have not written. It comes across as you trying to pull this info off as your own. Granted, there is a link to the info, but you make no mention that you are quoting anyone or give the author's name... just some friendly advice.
I wonder if the writer's comments about use of pot metal with lead content, and cyanide in the plating process are correct? Think about the dog food and children's toys issue.
"I wonder if the writer's comments about use of pot metal with lead content, and cyanide in the plating process are correct? Think about the dog food and children's toys issue."
Well, it may be correct. On the brighter side, the chance of lead poisoning or cyanide poisoning aren't that high with these because after a few trys, the players will give up and move on to the Guitar Hero Games.
Speaking of lead poisining, it wasn't that long ago that US made toys had led and pot metal. There used to be lead toy soldiers that were fun to chew on and pot metal toys. I was discussing this with a person who is 60 and he reminded me of the lead tinsel that people used to have for the Christmas tree. They'd save from year to year. there was also lead flat-wound spiral candy cane ornaments and such that was probably colored with lead paint. Of course even today, many of the water pipes in city waterlines are lead but the chance of ingesting the lead is very low because its been lined with sediments after all these years. Only in the winter when they freeze and break are they hazardous.
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"It is too bad we don't have something like a sticky post option on this board."
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