George, you said the grades you're proposing are:

New, Excellent, Fair and Poor

I really think it should be

New, Excellent, Good, Fair and poor.

In my experience, there is a wide gap between Excellent and Fair. Just a thought.

I'm having it tattooed across my inner eyelids ...

Whoever Jim is, I propose that his "Vintage Drum Guru" tag be changed to "Resident Buddha."

It's very difficult to ignore impolite comments/strong opinions on anything (my fingers start twitching whenever something gets said, written, etc., believe me), that to be reminded that there's a high road one can take, that it invariably leads to a better place than that other one does, is a breath of fresh air.

My :2Cents: chris

The bluebook website lists the four conditions as:

New

Excellent

Good

Fair

I am reading it now and noticed the discrepancy.

toodles

drumhack Storm Trooperbaby crawl2:oGroup HugStorm Trooper

Well, I took the plunge and asked George for a password to check out the site. No use in continually criticizing it without actually reading it I figured.

My thoughts are that the pricing aspect appears to be a small part of the overall content. There is a ton of information about the sample Ludwig Supra on there. A ton. I believe I may be getting on board with this as far as the informational aspect goes. It can be a one-stop shop for basically getting information about any drum known to man, which I understand is the purpose of this forum as well. The pricing, I won't have much interest in, but again, this is way more than an appraisal book, at least if all of the drums get the same treatment as that Supra did. He even pointed out how to distinguish between brass and aluminum shells.

In the preamble, there is also a very good description of the term Vintage, and how it will/wont be used in the book.

I just wanted to be fair and give my take on what I read, given my earlier comments on this thread. I do think this will be a MASSIVE undertaking, with thousands of man hours to complete, but the final product will be something worth checking out.

toodles

drumhack band2Clapping Happy2Storm TrooperStorm TrooperMind Blowi

I wish I could claim that bit of wisdom... came from some motivational speaker some place.

I've had it on the stick board above my desk for years... this just seemed like a good time to type it out.

Buddha... :) my kids say I look like a buddha... Vintage Drum Guru.. not even close either.

Nobody loves vintage drums more than George Lawrence (OK maybe a tie with David or Mike Curotto or Rob Cook.. well I suppose that list could get long. ). But still who better to compile a seminal work on the subject.

How exciting to have sat with Webster when he said... I want to write a dictionary.

I'm sorry I wrote the wrong thing. What I have at present is

NEW

EXCELLENT

GOOD

FAIR

I am not including mint or poor

The description is probaby the most helpful part of the book. There are a lot of people who don't want to buy or sell, they just want to know what they have.

It is something I would use for sure. You have a lot of work ahead of you Mr. Lawrence. When can I get the Left footed triple Ultrasuck foot pedal for 1200?

Ed

I agree about not using 'mint' as a grade. It's the most overused and has come to mean everything that it is not.

In coin collecting, mint means new, uncirculated, brand new.

Applied to a drum, 'mint' means new, still in the box or bag, never played, and only minor handling at that.

But we have gotten used to seeing it applied to drums that are well used, and nice or even excellent in some cases. But they are not mint.

I have seen only one mint drum so far: a new-in-the-opened box Rogers tom from the 60's.

Even NOS is not Mint. An NOS item can have a lot of shop wear.

Once musical instruments become collectible, they usually attain higher values in a certain circle of collectibility. For instance, I would think that Premier drums command much more interest in Britain ,than in North America.

Cars are pretty much locked into a market situation, in a specific country,state or in my case province, due to import restrictions based on safety equipment,transport dept. standards etc., so a BB works within that confined market.

How do you propose to accomodate the fact that drums have international fluidity ,can move across borders pretty easily and all of a sudden a Capelle snaredrum has lost 1/2 it's value ,according to a book because it ended up in Nebraska?