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Hi,

I am trying to help a friend sell her Steinway NY model A with an Ebony finish. It was built in April 2005 and she bought it in the spring of 2006 for about $70K. She had a PianoDisk PianoCD installed on it but it never worked correctly and the control head has been at the dealer for repair since the summer 2006. (they are trying to find it) So, it has only about 10 hours of actual playing time on it.

Does anyone have an idea of what is a reasonable selling price and a good way to go about selling this pristine item?

Many thanks.

Hal

Welcome to the forum.

You can purchase an ad to advertise your piano on this site. Pianomart and craigslist are also mentioned often here. The forum generally frowns upon people trying to directly solicit a piano sale in the piano forum.

I don't sell pianos, and don't know how a non-functional pianodisc system figures into the pricing. I would probably look at the pianobuyer pricing guide for a new instrument, as well as read the information about used instruments and depreciation there. You can start with the price of a new one, figure in a small discount (roughly 10%), then depreciate it to reflect its age and lack of factory warranty (pianos tend to depreciate most in their first decade). Until someone with more knowledge of the market chimes in, my "gut" reaction for just the piano would be something around $50k... possibly less in this economy.

For what it's worth, a friend of mine in the Washington DC area purchased a new Steinway A around the same time as your friend. It took her quite a few months to sell it but I believe she got something in the upper 40s. I doubt that having the PianoDisk PianoCd option will enhance it's value (especially since it's on the blink). In fact, it may not appeal to many serious pianists. Good luck.

Rich

I’ve never had a desire for a player system…

I want to play my piano myself, (though the player would be much better than me ).

Rick

I had one added to my piano and am very sorry I did. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. I thought it would give me hours of listening to my favorite works played on a real piano, but instead it is so loud it runs everyone out of the house. I have someone coming to adjust it next week and am hoping for improvement, but I'm not holding my breath. I would much rather just play the piano myself, even though I'm not very good.

Unless the pianodisk system works and works well I would suspect that the piano might sell better with it removed completely.

Something doesn't seem quite right with this post. Do you mean to tell us that the owner of the piano has not even questioned why PianoDisc unit would be "at the dealer for repair" for 5 YEARS?!? Seriously? What's missing here?

If the installer of the system was an authorized installer/dealer, etc., for PianoDisc, any issue it might have had would have been taken care of years ago - maybe there is more to the story, before everyone starts trashing the player system.

We've installed those systems for years and I can count on two (yes, two) fingers how many times the unit had to be switched out for a warranty issue.

Whether or not the piano will sell sooner with the system, depends on who the buyer is. In our experience, its been about 50/50.

That's a steep price. New model B's were going for about 63K back then. I hope your friend is prepared to take a big loss. I don't know what a new A goes for today, but I doubt you'll get more than 35K, and that's if the piano is fantastic.

I thought Steinway pianos appreciated in value and were great investments?

Rick

Only if you're a Steinway dealer.

Go Rickster!

I agree that there has to be more to the story than we now know. Five years is a long time to wait for repairs, particularly if the piano is completely untouched for all that time. The idea of a five year old piano that has only been played for 10 hours total seems very odd.

But the price inluded the Piano Disc System which can add many thousands, depending on how fancy the system was.

The current SMP for a Steinway A is around 74K and the piano is less than five years old. Without the Piano Disk system included, Fine's depreciation schedule would place its value at around 70% of 74K or in the high 40's.

Or if it is old enough.

Wooooh. Maybe they are a good investment after all. I didn't realise they had gone up so much.

hmm, isn't 70% of 74K actually $51,800 (also known as the low 50's)

The missing Pianodisc CD controller (box) can be easily replaced via Pianodisc in that the system is still in production though the Pianodisc IQ conversion at this stage may make the piano more marketable.
50K+ seems more accurate as for resale even in a recessed market. The piano with the player is way over 70K new at present.

Yes, but I was throwing in a fudge factor for of a small discount from SMP that Steinway seems to have been giving recently. The deprciation schedule is based on actual present selling prices.