the Fly Clone Project

Voice Of Reason wrote: ↑Fri May 05, 2023 3:24 pm Not sure Reverb’s reach is worth the fee.

That is, for sure, something I consider regularly for both Fly Clone listings and personal ones.

The big tax issue is the new 1099-K reporting requirements for online marketplaces since they'll report unadjusted gross sales as income at a threshold of $600. Reverb is working fairly hard to reverse this which tells you everything you need to know in terms of how great they think it's gonna be for business. The additional cost to taxpayers who have no additional tax liability in reality will be high, mainly in the form of fees to tax preparers and/or as payments to the IRS in cases where it will actually be cheaper to just pay the ransom than spend tons of time attempting to reconstruct records to prove their number is wrong. The other aspect is that the vast majority of these people are hobbyists, which means they can't take offsetting losses like a business, yet are now required to keep detailed records as a business would just to avoid having a fake tax liability. For the true sickos out there, you may find some humor in the fact that one of the few examples in the IRS FAQ is about selling a personal guitar at massive loss:

During the year, I sold my personal guitar for $800 on a social media platform's marketplace and I received Form 1099-K. I purchased the guitar several years ago for $3,000. How do I prove how much I paid if requested by the IRS? (added December 28, 2022)

I refuse to spoil such an exciting answer, so you can click the link below and see for yourself (about halfway down).

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/form-1099- ... s-general

Thanks for making me worry even more!



Unfortunately I was hoping that the newly-funded IRS would go after Billionaires, Millionaires & Thousandaires.

Instead, now I assume they want my guitar-playing $600.

Lime gold '14 Mojo on Reverb for $3,499+tax. I remind you all that the Graphtech era of production means that, for anyone wanting a Mojo MIDI, you can spend a few hundred more to implement the Hexpander stuff. Update: Sold within 24 hours.

A member of the Parker Guitars FB group is selling their hardtail Artist for $2,500. Update: Post deleted, guitar presumed sold.

In case anyone was wondering: No; your Fly backplate cut from a sheet of common 2mm haircell texture ABS plastic and specifically unsigned by Ken is probably not worth $250. Mike Gallenberger sells them for $19.47; so just message him on Reverb or eBay.

Another swell Reverb speculator who buys '94-'10 era Fly nuts from Mike for $4.75 per nut and resells them for $99 with a hyperbolic listing body about the rarity of a generic TUSQ blank cut with an angled back has now discounted them to $75. If you check out his feedback, you can see he just bought his May stock of marked up $99 Fly nuts from Mike last month.

I bought a Parker Supreme KOA new (can't remember when, drain bamage from kemo) but hoping someone on here could help date it an give me a rough guesstimate of worth. S/N is P0908682. If I remember correctly, seems like I paid $7K for it.

I know there weren't a lot of solid KOA guitars made and I sort of want to get an idea of what it's worth so my kids won't sell it in a garage sale for $50.00

Tom

Pretty sure there are only, like, 10 or 20 of those KOA ones made by USM.
I asked about them once and they were REALLY expensive when they came out.

Just be sure to Play it. Play it all the time. If not post it for $10,000 or something ridiculous and play a different one every day.

We've got a seller crossing their fingers and claiming their '05 Ice Blue Burst Deluxe with what appears to be a delaminating fingerboard on Reverb for $2,500+tax is just fine. Everything is fine! Update: The guitar sold; and now we wait to see if the buyer posts a thread asking for repair advice.

We have a new flipper ...

https://reverb.com/item/69662343-parker ... 2008-white $2000 + $100 shipping, purchased 6 weeks prior on Ebay for $938.00 + $47.09 shipping. Even shipping doubled in price in less than 2 months!

That's cute; given they're competing with this $1,166 listing (and we'll see how long that one sits for).

If I were in the market for a nitefly that one without the back plate would be it. The other one Is one of those weird non-piezo models and is pissing me off already.

Patzag wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 3:21 pm Even shipping doubled in price in less than 2 months!

I blame Newman!!!!

vjmanzo wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 8:21 pm

Patzag wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 3:21 pm Even shipping doubled in price in less than 2 months!

I blame Newman!!!!


IMG_9741.jpeg

There's nothing worse than having to explain a joke. But forgive me - I'm French! So I actually don't know what this refers to.

Patzag wrote: ↑Wed May 31, 2023 10:37 pm …I actually don't know what this refers to.

All good! In addition to being obsessed with Flys I’m actually also obsessed with the show Seinfeld (as a proper child of the ‘90s!)!! A villainous character of “pure evil” on the show was a postal worker named Newman.

So, apart from obviously blaming the Fly flipper for doubling the postal costs for this NiteFly—in my brain—any discussion of inflated shipping costs ought to also place blame on the most contemptuous postal service employee of all time: Newman!

A little random, I know

The guy in the Facebook group who bought the Vernon Reid model on Reverb in "very good condition" when the guitar arrives:
https://tenor.com/oDMG.gif

sindrist wrote: ↑Sun Jun 04, 2023 5:35 am …in "very good condition"…

Yeah, Reverb and eBay and the like are all subject to that sort of thing—I’m particularly soured when sellers downplay fret/fretboard issues with Parkers. If the new owner of that Vernon Reid MaxxFly DF824VR is reading this post, one of our fellow members recently had success addressing a lifting/delaminating fretboard!

The seller was, indeed, correct that the instrument was rare, so I wonder if the allure of this instrument for the new owner had more to do with the collectibility than the playability of this instrument.

Only because someone else is going to mention it: I'm aware of the $17,000 listing for the yellow 2014 Mojo MIDI. After 2020, that particular Reverb seller's M.O. became having the most expensive listings for a given brand (in lieu of paying for Reverb Bumps); and he's happy to advertise a thing for $10,000 above what most would describe as its "actual" value, with the understanding that the final sale price is a separate matter.

In the broader market, such listings serve only as a reference point for those disingenuous enough to claim that their personal guitars have abruptly skyrocketed in value (e.g., "There's one for $17,000 on Reverb RIGHT NOW!!"). Thus, I have no reason pertinent to this thread to be advertising these listings - What can be inferred from them speaks only to the seller's personal cynicism; and not to the market (i.e., the guitars actually managing to sell for their listing price). It can be fun to react to "greedy" sellers/flippers - But this particular marketing tactic presumes that the listing (and links to it) will be cited and advertised. Being as I'm not employed by that Reverb storefront, I'll let someone else do that for them.

All that being said: If such bait listings manage to lure other sellers out of hibernation, it may result in new data for some of the more desirable SKUs and colors.

My Parker fly obsession has come back (dormant from the late ‘90’s until 2021, then a pause until a couple weeks ago). It’s been great reading the wealth of info and perspectives here.

Looks like now there are a few dozen flys available out there and the floor is ~$2.5k, with a lot of models in the $3k range. (Even a few models seem to have some significant drawbacks)

I haven’t been following long enough, but is this a recent jump in cost? Is the amount of flys on the market typical? Did Parker flys do the same thing that the housing market did over the past couple years (big jump in costs and big reduction in available stock)?

Saw that black ‘90’s model come and go in an instant…. Maybe that was a sign…

tronathan wrote: ↑Mon Jun 12, 2023 8:00 pm is this a recent jump in cost? Is the amount of flys on the market typical? Did Parker flys do the same thing that the housing market did over the past couple years (big jump in costs and big reduction in available stock)?

Saw that black ‘90’s model come and go in an instant…. Maybe that was a sign…

Being as I’ve been a broken record with these matters, I was hoping someone else would address your questions. I’m nonetheless happy to extend my own, meager, heavily biased impressions:

1. The trend of high-aiming listing prices (not to be taken as selling prices) is a lingering consequence of the efforts a small number of Reverb flippers made to force a speculator market during the 2020 lockdown. This largely subsided when the most egregious reseller was banned from Reverb three or four times in 2022 in the course of attempting to evade their initial ban for abusive behavior (which was documented; and can be elaborated upon further via PM, for any curious parties).

2. The amount of competing Fly listings on a given site is typical for this point in the cycle: It’s a niche market; which is quickly saturated and congested with resellers who tend to jump the gun the moment they think market values are on the rise again (ironically acting to devalue their own listings through competition).

This perceived lack of demand, combined with Reverb’s never ending fee increases, makes the owners of more “desirable” Parkers reticent to find out what the guitars they’ve rationalized as being investments are actually worth.

Because the Facebook Parker groups are support forums, the two discussions you’re likely to find in them are “Help - I have no idea what I’m doing and don’t know where to source parts”, and “Emotional support group for men over 45 coping with their guitars not being worth as much as they thought.” I mention this because those two particular qualities of discussion are filled with comments shedding light on whether a particular Reverb or FB Marketplace seller has been led to convince themselves that they’re either offloading a lemon onto a gullible buyer, or earning a return on a short term investment. Though not always mutually exclusive, I’ve found those differing sentiments to result in the disparate asking prices we’ve tried to make sense of.

3. I don’t know that housing market scarcity is a fair comparison (Far less general demand for a Parker-analogous home design such as the Dymaxion than for tract homes). Washburn bought a brand too niche to ever really be profitable, then was seemingly devoted to devaluing the brand through selling budget versions of a boutique instrument which included none of the original’s distinguishing or redeeming features beyond its silhouette to an already oversaturated market. The people who bought those guitars seem to like them - But everyone else bought the competition’s guitars.

Beginning in approximately 4th quarter 2015 and lasting throughout most of 2016, the dramatic and publicized manner in which Exertis | Jam discontinued a premium guitar brand with proprietary hardware and construction caused the bottom of the Parker Guitars resale market to fall out; and dozens of competing sellers were eager to offload guitars they had convinced themselves would be irreparable upon their inevitable failure. Prior to this, 1993-2002-era Wilmington-built Parkers in the resale market were generally bought and sold for around a third of the price of new Parker-branded instruments produced in Buffalo Grove; and these pricing precedents more or less carried over until the speculator market was forced in 2020. Now they’re all over the place; with the line to actually land a sale being in the area of $2,500. As the listings continue to sit and crowd, this baseline will continue to trend downward, with the cycle seeming to reset around the $2k mark.

Without getting into how Reverb created and continues to contribute to their own massive inflation in listing prices by increasing fees and tax they fully understand sellers will pass on to the buyer, I liken the present Parker Guitars market to a waterhole that can’t really benefit any of the players in the ecosystem because it’s loaded with so many crocodiles that none of their prey want to go anywhere near it. Meanwhile, there’s a pile of crocs missing feet and caked in dried mud over in the depression where the Steinberger waterhole used to be, telling themselves “Fortune comes to those who wait with a GR4. Four thousand dollars, plus shipping.”

mmmguitar wrote: ↑Thu Jun 15, 2023 2:45 pm Meanwhile, there’s a pile of a crocs missing feet and caked in dried mud over in the depression where the Steinberger waterhole used to be…

Sometimes I wonder if Marc's comments/impressions are the main reason I visit this website

Thank you for your audience and thoughtful response to my clumsy series of neophyte queries - i re-read it a few times, deepening my fascination. Although I fear it is accompanied by a deepened obsession (as spectator only!) with the twists and turns of Parker fly transactions.