Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Piano Forum What piano would you buy if you win the lottery?

Or maybe you would think: screw piano, I'll get my own yacht...

I am not sure what I would do. But since it's enough to buy a yacht.I would donate money perhaps to the Red Cross and buy a CBechstein, Fazioli, Schimmel, Sauter or Bosendorfer semi concert grand.

A yacht is a hole in the water where you throw your money. Is there anything more boring than being at sea? I guess seasickness is exciting.

I would buy a mansion and hire people to run the house. If I wanted to be more frugal, I would buy a house slightly larger than my current house in order to be able to fit in a grand, something I cannot do now.

I’m really boring— I would not change my piano. No, it is not a Tier 1 with all the bells and whistles, but she makes me smile to play her.

I would probably enlarge my piano room and buy a couple of period pianos. New house? Nah.

A Steinway B Spirio-R
Or a Bosendorfer 200
or a Fazioli F212

AND
I would keep my Steinway Model A

I might consider buying a Mason & Hamlin AA or BB pre 1929
and have it totally rebuilt to my specifications as well.

so I would need to have a house to hold my THREE Grands!

I want to buy a Bösendorfer that needs to be restored and then I hire a technician to teach me how to restore it.

Excellent decision!

For me, first of all a bigger (or 2nd) house to put the pianos in - and then, a nice Viennese grand of circa 1800, suitable for Mozart and Haydn. And, another of the 1820s, suitable for Schubert - perhaps a Graf. And, perhaps, a really nice harpsichord. For which I would need lessons. And if there was another empty room that needed filling - a Broadwood Barless.

On Twitter, someone posed the following question:

If you were given $100 million dollars, how much would you give away?

The answers were interesting. They ranged from nothing to a substantial percentage.

I’d have to run the numbers regarding my life expectancy and projected costs but my gut feeling is that I would give away $95 million dollars.

I don’t think that would put me in the league with Chuck Feeney, who gave away pretty much all of his $8 billion dollars, but I think my largesse would allow me to sleep at night.

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ire...llionaire-who-gave-it-all-away-1.3413084

Andrew Carnegie said that the man who dies with all of his money dies disgraced. So, he built libraries and universities. The workers would have preferred higher wages instead of libraries but he decided he wanted to build libraries. I believe he gave away over $300 million dollars, a lot of money for his time.

There's a guy on Youtube who did just that:

Steinway D, Fazioli F303, Bosendorfer Imperial 290, all in the same room:



I feel extremely lucky; I pretty got to choose my dream piano. If budget was absolutely zero concern and I could also have a separate music studio (so that noise/disturbance was not as well), I agree with brdwyguy that I would very likely still want the piano I chose, and would just add on to the collection

For some reason, I find that guy to be incredibly annoying. I don’t want to watch the video. Does he own all three or none of them?

Hmm, if I won the lottery, first I would move! We would need a much bigger piano room, for starters!

Then I would need to actually play a Bosie, an Estonia, a Fazioli... and any number of other pianos that I read about here all the time, but have yet to encounter in person.

I would take my time, fly all over the place and enjoy the experience.

Sigh, it's fun to dream...

At the moment, it'd be a Bosendorfer 214VC. That piano really blew me away recently... any other day, I'd probably pick a Yamaha CF6 or a Steingraeber.

I would keep my pianos as well and buy one of those grands above either a (Bechstein, Schimmel, Sauter, Bosendorfer or Fazioli and a restored Forte Piano) I would also want to save the great apes in Africa like gorillas, perhaps also Giraffe, Rhino and elephants.Well we can dream..

So, winning the lottery can turn out to be the worst thing that ever happened to you:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/14/us/lottery-winners-whose-lives-were-ruined.html

or, if you're clever, it can turn out ok. First of all, you'd want to keep your identity secret, something that I believe is not allowed in the US but perhaps is in Europe. Even if you can opt for anonymity, there will be people looking for you. So, you're going to have to go into hiding. A British man, a blacksmith, won the lottery, claimed anonymity, and just wanted to keep his small village life. Well, the British press somehow found out that a blacksmith had won so they turned over the entire country and looked up every single blacksmith and eventually found the guy. As a result, the man had to flee.

This is to say nothing of the lawsuits you are going to face from all friends and relatives. Money can do terrible things to people. Beware of what you wish for.

The young kid in the leather jacket is not the guy who owns all three; he's just a guest shooting his video in the house of the guy who has all three (and the Fazioli is of course an "F308", oops).

I've seen on Youtube a few others who have some kind of rotating assortment of premium grands in their houses, including this guy who has a bunch of videos including a couple of Steinway Ds and a Bosie 225s. Whenever I see these, I do wonder how folks get to the "multiple concert grands" stage of fortune

I'll give you a hint, it was not through straight salary.

I worked for an extremely wealthy man who would have had no trouble buying as many grands as he liked. I don't think he played but perhaps his kid did. Still, how many grands does one need? How many houses does one need? How many cars?

I figured the young man was just visiting someone's house.

And thought I could fantasize? I had not thought of it in that detail. Larry I hope you win!

(I cannot win, I so seldom take part in lotteries)

Please do not wish such ill fortune on me. I never play the lottery, my life will not be ruined in this way.

I just finished Charles Dickens's novel Our Mutual Friend. This novel has a lot to say about how society perceives money and the good and bad uses that money can be put to, and the way money can improve or destroy lives. Highly recommended.

I played a Bosendorfer 280VC on Saturday that was just perfect and would be my lottery-winning choice. But first I would need to buy a bigger place for it - it would be too tight a fit in my small house.

Some US states allow winners to remain anonymous: The states that allow lottery winners to remain completely anonymous are: Arizona, Delaware, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Texas, North Dakota, and Ohio.