Bump.
TL;DR Version: Which Fly colors seem to be selling, and what are my saddles and humbuckers worth?
Two orders of business: I’d like to highlight two recent listings and contrive some significance from them, and try to establish a value for Fly saddles and pickups:
2014 DF824 (P1409011), with Graph Tech Hexpander 13 pin-out.
[Dead eBay Link]
I’ve previously made reference/rant to this phenomenon: Reverb is the place to find $5k+ Flys, and eBay the place to find Flys more realistically priced.
The high Reverb prices can be directly attributed to a single seller and their MO to buy a Fly, remove the spring, relist the Fly for more than 200% profit, then list the spring separately for $160+. This splash in the very small pool that Parker sales represent in the used market has seemingly resulted in Guitar Center, as well as other Reverb sellers, taking the ambitions of an individual to signify a dramatic increase in market value for all Parker-branded products and parts.
If I may be forgiven for invoking the Thomas theorem: The situations that the Parker Guitars community defined as real have become real in their consequences. I’ve observed Fly owners from within this community list their Parkers on Reverb specifically because they’ve observed that their guitars can be sold for hundreds (and seemingly
thousands) more than they’d realistically expect from listing on this site or eBay.
Which brings me to the eBay listing: Despite the linked Fly being “priced to move” in comparison to recent Reverb listings, it did not receive a single bid. In fact, we have several listings on eBay and Reverb that have been sitting at the $1.9k-2.4k mark for months and
years. There seems to be a great disparity in perceived value between Flys of all eras, based solely on the perceived color rarity and SKU rarity. I’ve not seen a rootbeer Fly in some months; hence I expect to see the next one listed specifically on Reverb, and specifically in excess of $3k. However, several cherry Fly Classics have been sitting at around the $2.2k mark for many months.
So let’s try and list some Parker finishes and SKUs that owners seem to feel command high resale prices, contrasted with those that seem to be sitting/selling for much less:
High asking prices, fast sales: Lime gold, tangerine, solar flare, white, taxi yellow, rootbeer, heather gray, silver, teal, transparent blue, as well as all Artist and Supreme SKUs. The comparatively low production numbers of DF824 and 42 SKUs seem to now ironically command the highest asking prices, after their introduction led to the death of the brand.
Lower asking prices, slower sales: Italian plum, majik blue, antique gold, cherry, metallic red, emerald green, dusty black.
…
Secondly, my house and garage look like a Guitar Center exploded. I’m hoping to consolidate and better organize all the gear and parts I have laying around; and that includes offloading some Fly parts:
I have six Fishman saddles from my ‘11 Supreme that I know I’m not going to use, as well as the Gen 2 Dimarzios from the same guitar. Though I have a few other odds and ends I’ll address in a later post, I feel the value of the mentioned parts are easiest to discuss:
A set of Graphtech Fly saddles can seemingly be scored from between $90 and $106, with the latter seeming to be the Minimum Advertised Price (hereafter referred to as MAP) set by Graphtech. Would anyone object to the Fishman saddles being listed at parity; with a value of 1/6th of $106, each?
The Gen 2 Dimarzios, still in production, seem to have a MAP of $160 for a set. Let us therefore discuss how much a used set may be expected to depreciate: 10, 20, 30 percent? Would Gen 1 pickups be expected to be equal in value, or priced much higher in accordance with trends amongst Reverb sellers (bearing in mind that the buyers were essentially paying to avoid ordering whatever Fly pickups they wanted direct from Dimarzio)?
thats some serious coin!
