Just a lament on buying, selling, and ethics

[PeteDuBaldo]

For low-ball offers on Reverb there is a setting to automatically decline any offer under 64% of listing price.

It is located at:
My Reverb
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---Payment & Policies (scroll to bottom of page).

 

[jayjayjay]

First, I sympathize, and I understand what you're getting to - your motivation is to get these wonderful instruments into the hands of people that would love them and play them, which is admirable. And, they are works of art. Functional works of art.

Second, but, and at the risk of sounding callous, these aren't regulated goods or even necessities, such as food, water, utilities. They are guitars. These guitars are arguably luxury items. People can ask whatever they want for them. And because they are guitars, nobody is forcing people to pay those prices.

I recently finished moving, selling my old house and buying a new one. The real estate market is like this - people get irrational ideas of what they think they can get for their house. The market has a way of correcting those beliefs, because the house won't sell. Sellers get accordingly miffed. Likewise, people get in a twist complaining about how expensive the market is. I know, because it's housing there are economic repercussions that somewhat justify this view. Laying aside economic policy, however, it's mostly people bent out of shape because they had some vision of where they should live and are discovering that everyone else had the same vision, and that drives up price beyond their means.

The economics lesson aside, it seems what you're complaining about is that the free market, surprise surprise, isn't driven by altruistic goals - it's driven by people maximizing profit. That's life. We aren't entitled to get what we want, when we want, at the price we want. Just like a seller isn't entitled to sell their goods when they want at the price they want. Controlled markets have been tried (see, Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Vietnam, and every other historical command economy), and while it may result in low prices, it also results in flat out scarcity. So, no matter what, someone is still miffed.

All that said, that's a bummer about your friend who said they'd sell it back at your sales price, but did you get that in writing? If not, there's a saying about oral contracts that comes to mind: they're only worth the paper they're printed on. In the future, get a written agreement. Or just take out a loan, because that's basically what you were asking your friend to do - give you a zero-interest loan in exchange for temporarily borrowing your instrument.