He is doing this as a guide folks, not set hard and fast rules to pricing for every drum. Many other industries (Guitars, cars, furniture, ***elry etc.) have price guides and they are just that, GUIDES. Here is the reality check, I, like many people on this board, resell drums either in shops, at shows or on Ebay or Craigslist and for me I know that having a median price line to work from is a helpful thing. If I have a snare that I picked up at a yard sale and it ends up being in really good condition and I look in the guide to see that the are selling between $300.00 and $650.00 depending on condition then I know that $500.00 is going to be a more realistic price if I want to move it quickly. Don't get me wrong, I know that I may be able to get more and could possibly get the higher dollar amount if I list it in an auction but I could come up short there as well. The drum is only worth whart someone is willing to sell it for and someone is willing to pay for it on any given day. If the drum can fetch prices as high as $650.00 then you can list it for that but then you may end up sitting on it for a while and while I am in this for the love of the drums, the drum doesn't make me any money sitting on a shelf, it only makes me money if it sells.

In the car world, 20 years old is considered classic (vintage) and anything over 40 years old is considered antique. I have always used this as a guidline when looking at old drums. You may want to consider somethiing similar George. Again, not set rules but just a guideline. Write your blue book, it is a free country and those who don't want to use it don't have to read it.

I had messed around with the idea to do a price guide for 60's Ludwig kits....but then I started to run into all the "yeah, but..."s and realized it wasn't going to be as easy as it seemed.

In all honesty, it's not a consensus of opinions that determines the general value of a given drum (or set) at a given moment in time....and, as you already know, these values change like the VU meters in a discotheque! Burger Kin One day, a Jazzette kit os worth $3K, the next day , it's worth $5K and then the next day after that, it's worth $2500. The value is whatever price the seller sets and is met with and agreed upon by the buyer.

I have several drums I want to sell, but the market is so down at the moment, I'd rather just keep them. But I do want to sell some things and when I get a real offer that fits in with my personal value system, then I'll sell.

If someone took a guide and tried to use it as a lever to get me to drop my price, then it would work against that person.

That`s all good O, but when it come to the critisize`n of a particular seller, say for instance they`re called greedy and the buyer is told that it`s being taken for a ride and the seller calls fowl or cries to the mods that he`s being treated unfairly,...you open up a can of justice wars that should take it`s course and not be locked or judged !! As long as it don`t get personal, it should be allowed and tolerated, just as the greedy have their say, so should others !!

Mikey, it is not a price guide for vintage drums. It is a price guide for ALL drums. I will leave it up to the reader to determine what is vintage to him. I will use terms and phrases such as holy grail, desirable, rare, collectable, etc. to older drums and will probably use the term vintage sparingly for drums that everyone would agree are "vintage". I also mentioned that I have different levels of condition, and will have a grading system to determine condition. Wanna look at the bluebook?

Thanks, I'm very aware of the Vintage Guitar book. In fact I modelled a lot of my site and book after it. I've spent way too much money on blue books lately. The owner of the Arlington Show and I are old friends. I used to live in Dallas. We have talked about doing a joint guitar and drum show in Las Vegas.

There won't be any buying or selling on the blue book site, and the moderators will simply delete anything that gets personal or uglyl. It won't be run as a forum. The comments section will be for contributions of opinions and prices with evidence. In my world, a guy who sells a drum for more than it usually sells for is not greedy, he's lucky!

I agree. The only ones who determine the general value of a general drum are the buyer and the seller, but they will both look at the comparables, so the blue books tries to report the comparables.

Thanks. I don't think I want to define what is vintage, though I do already have a paragraph written about in the introduction which is ambiguous enough to let me dance around the issue :-). For me, and not for the blue book necessarily, If it is out of production and desirable, then it's vintage. There are exceptions but they are usually obviously vintage

If you will read the page from the blue book that I posted you can see that i have set four general grades; New, Excellent, Fair and Poor. Anything that has non original parts of a different brand could not be considered excellent or new, wouldn't you say? Rewrapped drums, the wrong throw off, hoops, etc. has always lowered the value of desirable vintage drums. I'm sure there are exceptions, like unoriginal tom holders on old Gretsch bass drums. Some of the old Gretsch hardware was really bad and many owners had them replaced with more modern mounts for durability and ease of use. Sometimes the Gretsch factory would install the competing brand mounts!. I think it is beyond the scope of the blue book to try to price out frankenstein kits.

As for celebrity sets, that's a whole different ball game and won't be in the book. Speaking of which, there is an Elvin Jones owned 16x16 Gretsch floor tom on my site for sale in the classifieds with a price of $6500. Y'all chew on that! :-) Someone will pay it!

I'm printing that out and putting it over my desk!