It can be a challenge to determine if you’re paying a fair price for a piano. Because local market forces have a huge influence on piano prices, it is common to expect to pay more for a piano in Los Angeles, New York, or Miami than you would at a store like ours. We are a family run business with very low overhead costs. Big cities and big companies have to charge more because they have higher rent and other expenses.
These factors have given rise to online services that will charge you to tell you how much you should pay for a piano. These same sites offer to appraise pianos online, which is weird, because it’s impossible to calculate the value of a piano without, well, actually seeing it. The problem with these sites is that, unlike with automobiles, boats, motorcycles, and homes, pianos do not have titles that have to be registered.
True blue book values are based on how much something – like a car – is sold for. That information is recorded when the car is titled and states sell that information to companies like Edmunds and Kelley. Same concept holds true for anything with a title. So, whether you sell your car to a friend or buy it from a dealer, the amount of the purchase of that exact car, year, color, model, etc, is all recorded.
In the piano world, the data just doesn’t exist. So where do piano blue books get their prices?
Well, nobody knows and the piano blue book sites won’t say. It appears that they will sometimes use MSRP or wholesale price sheets that are decades old. Some suspect that these sites are even run off-shore (their pages often read like emails from a distant prince offering you an inheritance in exchange for your credit card information) although it’s impossible to tell. Sadly, this misinformation only takes advantage of consumers and often leads them to believe that the fair price they were offered on the piano they loved was too high.
How to get the best price on a piano:
- Work directly with the owner of a reputable, established piano store,
- Offer to pay with cash or a check instead of a credit card (merchant fees add up),
- Only consider the price you are paying – not how much of a discount you may be offered, and
- Buy the piano you like the best from someone you feel you can trust.