used bagpipes Ebay

[OC Richard]

On another thread a potential new piper was concerned about bagpipe prices.

One resource often overlooked is picking up a fine used instrument on Ebay for well under what a new bagpipe would cost.

Right now, doing the following search

-bagpipe
-all listings (Buy It Now and Auction)
-all categories (because many sellers post things in odd categories)
-worldwide
-sorted by Highest + Shipping First
-used

I came up with the following instruments in the under $1,500 range (what you would pay for a decent student/stepup flute, sax, or horn).

All are fine handcrafted Scottish-made African Blackwood instruments. Any would do you for many years if not your lifetime of playing.

Grainger & Campbell $1,450 BIN

Robertson $1,000 17 hours

McCallum $900 10 hours

Pettigrew $600 4 days/ $860 BIN

Grainger & Campbell $410 1 day

Hardie $500 1 day

Hardie $300 5 days

Kintail $213 5 days

I myself would be most interested in the Grainger & Campbell pipes, a fine maker in the 2nd half of the 20th century. The prices reflect the current fairly low esteem that Hardie and Kintail pipes are held in, yet I've heard great-sounding Kintails. If that Kintail goes for around $500 it's a steal.

The curious one here is the Robertson set, an extremely highly-regarded mid-20th century maker. This set is mounted in real ivory which makes it illegal to transport across international borders, and illegal to possess in the USA. These legal issues might be the cause of its ridiculously low price.

I perhaps should point out that the McCallums are made in a modern factory-like shop using sophisticated CNC machines. Some look down on McCallum pipes for that reason, but you'll see plenty of McCallums being played in Grade One circles which speaks for itself.

A couple notes for non-Ebayers

-when you sort by Highest Price + Shipping First, any item listed with Shipping Not Specified drops to the bottom of the last page

-searching Used will mean that you miss seeing used instruments which the seller hasn't listed as Used for no apparent reason. It happens all the time.

[tundramanq]

OC, did you see any copycats? At the upper prices its quite profitable to make these pieces of junk, lookalikes. New to the pipes people really don't know what to look for to separate genuine from fake.

Really, I would want a veteran piper watching over my shoulder on this one.
Lots of interchangeable parts.?!?
Were they stored well or "a horror story" and prettied up?

[OC Richard]

OC, did you see any copycats?

If you mean like the thing where somebody in China makes a knockoff of a specific Gucci purse, AFAIK that sort of thing doesn't exist in the bagpipe world.

Yes a large number of makers in Sialkot Pakistani churn out horrid pipes, but experienced pipers can spot these fairly easily. The Pakistani pipes look like Pakistani pipes. They're not exact copies of any specific Scottish makers. At least I don't recall that happening.

There was a thread here a while back where I show two Ebay listings, one a horrible cheap Pakistani pipe, the other a fabulous old Robertson set. The former is practically worthless, the latter worth thousands of dollars, and would make its owner very proud.

Even experts are occasionally fooled. Nearly always this is because the photos on the Ebay listing are blurry, or too far away, or don't show the diagnostic things pipe experts need to see. The expert knows he's taking a chance when he buys a set with marginal photos.

It's very common for a cheap Pakistani set to be misidentified by the Ebay seller as being from some particular Scottish maker. This isn't dishonesty but ignorance. Usually it's because the set of pipes happens to have a chanter with it by a legitimate maker, which is stamped with the maker's name, whereas Pakistani pipes are nearly always un-stamped.

Your point is completely true: Ebay is full of dangers for the non-expert, and such people really need to have an experienced pipe-spotter point out which pipes are a value.

[Willie T]

Thank you! This thread is very timely! In the next few months I'm hoping to buy a set and Ebay hadn't even crossed my mind. I took lessons many years ago and hadn't played in a long time but I recently started up again and I have been practicing on some borrowed poly pipes. I'd definitely prefer some blackwood pipes. Thanks again for the information!

[MacGumerait]

Richard , I have a set of Grainger and Campbell pipes that I purchased new in 1970 . They are quality and a bit heavy on weight . Although , they do have deep drone tone that I admire .

[416 Rigby]

I've heard snippets of McCallum bashing before. McCallums are CNC'd for all the roughing out and contouring, which saves a huge amount of labor time on steps of the manufacturing that don't require an extremely skilled woodturner. All the combing, beading, and polishing is done by hand. Anyone who looks down on them for that is pretty narrow minded. It doesn't take a huge amount of skill to rough turn the blanks, anyone with even a little bit of lathe experience is capable of that.

They're passing on the savings to the customer, and I suppose that rubs some elitists the wrong way. I have an extremely picky eye for detail from a career in aviation, and I'd be hard pressed to find anything amiss with my set of McCallums, or any of the other sets I've looked at. Fit and finish is excellent, and they have a 5 year warranty, another sign that a manufacturer believes in their product. Works for me.