Wholesale Values

[PassingThru]

Anyone know a website to determine the wholesale value of a guitar?

[Jimbo00]

One would have to be a guitar manufacturer to determine that valuation. The cost of materials, any parts that were manufactured in house or out sourced. There would be cost of materials, labor, General & Administrative expenses with profit factored into that. A one of item, profit isn't added to a total "cost" concept. And any cost/price determination would include "scrap", which is the wood that is unusable that is trimmed or becomes saw dust.

Take a neck for example. There's a slab of Rosewood that has a dimension in terms of SQ FT, LN FT or CU FT, a slab of maple same dimensions. The scrap would be that wood that is trimmed first & then shaped as the difference in what the raw materials started out as. There is a 2 way truss rod (in house or outsourced) at a cost for economies of scale for mass production. There is a certain amount of wood glue that is measured in ML. The frets, the nut. All that labor to order the materials & parts, assemble it, finish it. And then there is a cost allocation of the tooling, test equipment & anything else as an adder. The finishing raw materials lacquer or polyurethane. The mysteries or wild cards ? What does the raw wood cost to harvest ? What does it cost to dry the wood out ? Even the screws for strap buttons are a matter of raw materials to a finished product. And since metals are a commodity, the prices can change. Like oil, that price is also a market driven thing for futures on contracts to make a seemingly & endless supply of items. We take something like a screw or nail for granted, when you lose a screw or don't have one, it becomes a relatively important part. And the cost of a screw for economies of scale vs a 5 or 10 pack for a pickguard are they priced at a nickel, a dime or a quarter or more per screw ?

Last year had the roof redone, a box of 1,000 roofing nails, there are those that are hammered in manually, then there are those that are belt fed into an air nail gun. I was curious what the true material costs of the roof were, so I inventoried shingles, underlayment, nails, wet/dry seal, additional decking for repair of wood. There were the new vents and flashing that needed to be replaced. from that I was able to determine a relative cost for a retail roof, had I purchased each item at Home Depot or Lowes. The thing about shingles, those come in bundles that cover a certain square footage of roof. Multiplied that for the number of bundles and I was able to arrive at square footage of the roof. They delivered 72 bundles, there was 3 leftover as overage. Those 3 bundles are for future repairs in the event a storm takes shingles off the roof. sorry to go off on the tangent for a roof, but the same applies to making guitars, cars or anything else as a product.

When I read your question, for a new guitar that is what I was interpreting your question to be. For a preowned guitar, there's obviously depreciation or in the case of vintage collectible guitars appreciation. And the true cost of ownership of a new/preowned guitar is an ever changing number just the same. Every repair, maintenance service, every restring adds to the cost as a rolling price of the guitar. Amps are no different. Sorry to be accounting focused but that's how the system works for monetizing. So it varies, even with artists, how many hours of practice are uncompensated, may never be compensated, some artists made more than others.

[TheGITM]

Not sure how to interpret the question. Are you asking the wholesale cost to retail dealer? Or the wholesale value of a guitar that you are wanting to sell?

Either way, I am not aware of any site that will provide any wholesale figures. For dealers, their profit margin likely is in the 15% range. Often a manufacture will give dealer incentives based on volume, so a small dealer will pay $X for their inventory, and a large dealer will pay the same, but with threshold incentives (usually vendor rebates or purchase credits) when a certain amount is purchased.

My guess, and it's just a guess, is that retailers pay in the range of 55-65% of MSRP or MAP prices. That gives them room to list at 'street prices' and then give a bit more when a customer is negotiating.

[PassingThru]

Wholesale value for trade-in. Like a car.

[LAPlayer]

My opinion is what GC, and other use. That is 60% of average recent sales prices.

[TheGITM]

Originally Posted by PassingThru

Wholesale value for trade-in. Like a car.

Most dealers will offer 40-60% of retail value. Usually closer to 40, but if it's a model they think they can flip pretty easily they will go up. If they would list it at $1000, then they'd start at about $400 for trade-in. You can try and negotiate up from there. So you're starting point is what is the market retail value on it, and then back into what they might offer.

Side note: honest dealers will tell you this if you ask then directly.

[abn556]

I believe that there are several online used guitar valuation sites that can give you a value for a fee. Or you could go to Ebay and look up ended auctions and get an average for what that year and model of guitar is actually selling for.

If you are looking for new wholesale or a dealers price for major manufacturers, I have no idea where to get actual cost, but would guess that you could take MSRP and deduct 25-30%. You can get 20% off new guitars if dealers are motivated and I assume they are still making something at that price.

[12barBill]

In my experience, on a trade in you will usually get ~50% of what they intend to sell it for. That has been fairly consistent at stores like Guitar Center and smaller locally owned music stores.

[PassingThru]

Wish I was dealing with GC. They gave me 70% on my last trade plus a 10% trade up discount. This shop is a fine shop but discourages trade in’s due to how disappointed people are at the trade in value. Wholesale which is less than 50%. This is why I was looking for wholesale value. Is the difference between wholesale and what I could sell a guitar for worth the hassle. If trade in was 50% of retail, it would be a done deal. I really don’t like the packing and shipping. No, I’m not on Facebook Market either.

[TheGITM]

Only you can decide what it's worth to you. You will always make more $ is you sell it yourself, but that takes time and some effort, which has some value to you beyond just the guitar's worth.

If it's a guitar you don't play and won't miss, and you can use it to help acquire a guitar that you will play and are excited about, then what's it's true value? It's the $ you will get to help offset the cost of the new guitar. You can wait and sell it yourself to get more $ which you can then use to help with the cost of the new guitar, but you have to wait until you get the deal.

At the end of the day, it really won't matter. In 5 years you won't look back with regret that you gave up $X possible dollars in a guitar deal. At least I wouldn't.

Get a discount off the new guitar. Get what you can for the old guitar. And then see if they will throw in some store credit for strings and such... those are high margin items (ie, lower cost items) that they will often use to sweeten a deal. See what you can get, and then it's just a decision...

Not necessarily an easy one, though...

[usb_chord]

Wholesale is subjective, I'm afraid.

[Jimbo00]

Originally Posted by PassingThru

Wholesale value for trade-in. Like a car.

In that case, it's like a car, they'll offer what they assess the condition of a given instrument is & model of guitar by year for anything that depreciates. Wholesale value is more like the Trade-In value to the particular retail that is reselling it. That's going to vary, pawn shops vs music stores are different situations. And some may do a consignment sale for a flat fee or % of the price for sharing better sales performance when it's sold ?

I think a good indicator of what a valuation is, take the range Reverb has for past sales, look at the more recent sales. The low end is what you would expect a guitar to be for a trade in and all they have at Reverb is fair/good condition to excellent/mint/brand new.

Random Price Guide for Reverb as of today for the inventory they have had of a PRS SE A10E Angelus:

https://reverb.com/p/prs-se-a10e-angelus#price-guide

Range of Actuals $ 287-597
Most Recent Range of Actuals $ 400-465

You'd have to know the brand new MSRP to gauge what the Guitar is worth for it's actual market performance for resale. This PRS model is a general player, it's not a collectible, it's inventory to a retail operation & what the bottom line is for having it on he wall in the preowned section. It may be attractive to a buyer that is there to find an alternative to brand new. In that case it may cannibalize their new guitar sales. With used car sales they may make as much as selling a new car, depends what the market is doing at any given time of history. I'd be reluctant to throw out a %, some retail might be better than the other for determining their trade in valuations. The PRS random model in the example has bounced around for market economic conditions & buyer interest. One might filter out Reverb sales that were by Music Stores/Dealers only. But the Reverb thing has a filter for condition only. I mean a music store on Reverb is paying a fee to sell on Reverb, they are a dealer/wholesaler in effect. And if Good Condition range is the $ 287-407 of the actual range of all guitars regardless of condition, it's up to you to determine whether their Trade-In offer is acceptable price to part ways with it. Would one throw out the outliers of the extreme low & high that defines the range. Sales are on speculation

I've always approached a preowned sale as what is their low ball offer for it and then have a true up when the item sells. If it sells for better, there would be some sort of split. Maybe that's more of a consignment sale. I guess if you're trading in a guitar and getting another, that's a a finite amount for trade in on the new guitar. They aren't tracking down anyone for a few bucks more than it sells for, you walk out with the brand new guitar, they get a preowned guitar & cash deal.

[Osage]

Originally Posted by PassingThru

Wish I was dealing with GC. They gave me 70% on my last trade plus a 10% trade up discount. This shop is a fine shop but discourages trade in’s due to how disappointed people are at the trade in value. Wholesale which is less than 50%. This is why I was looking for wholesale value. Is the difference between wholesale and what I could sell a guitar for worth the hassle. If trade in was 50% of retail, it would be a done deal. I really don’t like the packing and shipping. No, I’m not on Facebook Market either.

In the guitar world, "wholesale" typically means the price a store pays for a new instrument from a manufacturer or distributer. "Retail" typically means the price they sell it for. The term "wholesale" doesn't really apply to used instruments.

Let's say you buy a new guitar for 2k. You decide to trade it to a store and they think they can sell it for $1.5k. They will typically offer you 50% of this sale price, so $750. The exact percentage can differ from store to store and instrument to instrument but this is the ballpark and can definitely be discouraging if you paid 2k for the guitar new and get offered $750 for it.

[Bowie]

Depends what money is worth to you in relation to effort and time. I hate giving away a few hundred (or thousand) dollars. And, selling items is easy for me so I never sell to stores. Actually, I did once as a kid and felt disgusted that I got so little for an item that I could have sold myself. If the thing stopping you is just that you haven't done it before and it seems intimidating, it's probably a lot easier than you're thinking.

Originally Posted by PassingThru

Wish I was dealing with GC. They gave me 70% on my last trade plus a 10% trade up discount. This shop is a fine shop but discourages trade in’s due to how disappointed people are at the trade in value. Wholesale which is less than 50%. This is why I was looking for wholesale value. Is the difference between wholesale and what I could sell a guitar for worth the hassle. If trade in was 50% of retail, it would be a done deal. I really don’t like the packing and shipping. No, I’m not on Facebook Market either.

[Jimbo00]

This was the acoustic guitar I bought back in October 2019.

https://reverb.com/p/applause-ae128-...10#price-guide

Reverb Actual Sales Price Range: $ 100-199.99

What I paid: $ 175 and I would consider it relatively a Very Good to Excellent condition.

The problem with that is there weren't that many AE-128's on Reverb that sold from 2016=>My Purchase Date=>Nov 2023 (last sale date). The range was $ 110-199.99 for 2016=>Oct 2019 (only 3 sales, the mid priced sale was $ 138, easy enough to figure out w/ a High, Low & middle sale). I bought the Ovation case separately $ 115 on a case that MSRP'ed for $ 159.99 Oct 2019. I have $ 290 into that guitar, add a $ 10 & tax for a strap, $ 300. I could've bought a new Ovation Applause at the same time for $ 325-350 guitar only on Amazon at the time. I saved $ 25-50 for my efforts and not only got a guitar, but a hardshell case & strap. The case was a Musician's Friend sale that was supposed to be a store display/open box. It came flawless pretty much, almost like the guitar as a preowned at the local music store, just not 2019 new for either item. I looked at it as getting $ 500 worth of items for $ 300. That perspective, it was a $ 200 cost savings for my effort to shop and get best deals I could piece together.

2019, they couldn't give anything away. And there still weren't many AE128's even in the Guitar Boom era. I bought most of my gear a year ahead of the Guitar Boom pandemic era. I probably could've flipped a package deal for at least what I had into the Applause & perhaps even made a relatively modest profit. Even when I bought, was any of what I bought worth close to $ 500 ? I see what I have as worth more to me to keep & play than flip really. It's a good player, but nothing special at the same time as far as the market's reality & facts of life selling price.

That's about where I am with just about every guitar I own, I paid a fair new or preowned prices on 8 guitars for when I bought them before the Guitar boom era. During the boom, I could've flipped them and most likely made a modest profit. But to sell one, I'd have to have another lined up that would've cost me more to replace what I was selling off. If I were getting out of music altogether, then I would've been better off than when I bought. I see prices for what I have, for example the $ 25 Squier Bullet SSS HT, that I could move that easily & get $ 50 for today, perhaps $ 75-80, even $ 100 ? The $ 50 resale price would be low balling what they list for on Reverb at the moment. Not leaving anything on the table though, that guitar may triple or more on my purchase price. It's trending down though to $ 80 list in 2024. Q4 2023, range was $ 125-180.

https://reverb.com/p/squier-bullet-s...er#price-guide