Selling your guitar?
I know that this site is principally geared to those of you that are looking to buy a used guitar, but what should do if you want to sell a guitar? I've ‘unloaded' guitars through a couple of different venues and will offer my advice in this article.
You first need to examine the different means by which you can either sell or trade your guitar, assuming that you will be obtaining a replacement to either upgrade your guitar or simply to add to your guitar collection. Although I feel that you can find the best value in a quality preowned guitar, you may simply want a brand new one. In that case you should first try to determine the market value of your used guitar with which you are parting. Get real here, because what you think it may be worth and what is being paid for the particular guitar model may not be reasonably close. There are several pricing guides for guitars, just like there are guides for used car values. If you have a friend in the business you can ask him or her to look it up for you...but you probably don't. In that case, you can either review prior eBay auctions or go to Blue Book Inc. and buy one of the Guitar Blue Books. However, if this is only a one-time proposition, you can gain a short-term subscription to look up the specific guitar's value for around $5.
With this information in hand, you can walk into your local music store and trade in your guitar on a new guitar purchase. But don't do this until you've actually established the best price that you can get for the new guitar. Also, keep in mind that the pricing reference for the guitar that you're trading in at the dealer will need to translate to a wholesale price. If you have established the retail price to be $500, remember that this is the target price at which the dealer will try to resell this guitar and you will not be offered that price on the trade in. Why? Simply because the dealer will need to make a profit on this guitar (just like they do on everything else in the store). So you should probably expect to be offered 20-40% less than your projected retail value. Of course, the profit that they are making on the new guitar that you want to buy will greatly influence their compromise relative to the retail and wholesale values of the trade-in.
Also, by knowing the guitar's value you can also offer it to a friend (at a discounted price, of course) or put it in a classified ad or on Craig's List. This may work and at times may even be an advisable approach, but it may also be a waste of time and limit your audience. Another option is to search the various guitar forums and see if they have a classifieds section and place it there or place it on one of the guitar sites that act as brokerages.
But probably the easiest way to get fair market value for your used guitar is to actually let the market determine its' value. eBay (or any auction site for that matter) that has a large audience will generally allow that to happen. In order to maximize the price for your guitar you will need to reach a large audience of prospective buyers and for the average Joe looking to do that, eBay is the place. In a follow-up article, I will detail some eBay listing and selling tips to drive up the price of your used guitar.