One of the places I buy and sell is eBay and, self-defeating though it may seem, my best advice on eBay is to avoid eBay completely unless you're a very savvy vintage horn shopper.  It's rare enough to encounter a really honest person in every day life, and steadfast candor is even scarcer on eBay.  Even generally trustworthy people often can be fooled by their own wishful thinking when an object in hand promises to fetch a cash windfall, based on a few seemingly harmless omissions or fibs.  Any experienced and discerning eBay shopper will most likely already have confirmed that reality the hard way.  The problem of eBay-inspired disingenuousness is only compounded by the fact that most of the sellers on eBay in fact have very little idea of exactly what they have in hand, when selling a horn; ignorance (often masquerading as innocence) makes it very easy for many sellers to pretend honesty when in fact they know quite well that they're being less than truthful in their listings.  Worse, often professional players, who have been playing 20+ years, are completely in the dark about vintage horns, and are apt to misrepresent their horns for the same reason that laypersons do; I've witnessed this personally, when reading between the lines, in some eBayers' listings.  God help you if you run into one of these players, and have to work through a post-sale negotiation on an item that's been misrepresented.

    The bottom line bears repeating:  if you're not an experienced vintage horn shopper (or, for lack of a less pompous and dubious title, an'expert') buying horns on eBay is an extremely bad, and potentially costly, idea.  The good buys are out there, but the rip-offs and 'lemons' far outnumber them.  There's a good chance that buying on eBay you'll save some money on your actual purchase of a horn, but the chances are better that a horn you've bought cheaply on eBay will need hundreds of dollars' worth of work to even approach practical playability.  Chances are, if you're hoping to get a horn in the $300-1000 range, you'll end up with a horn that has had serious and possibly irreparable damage, or at the very best that needs a complete overhaul by a tech who knows how to deal with idiosyncratic problems.  In that spending range, you're much better off buying a horn from a pawn shop, or an out of the way store, where you can at least look at the horn first, hold it in your hands -- probably even play it -- though most likely it won't play.  At least when confronting a potential purchase firsthand, one can get a concrete idea of whether the horn has had serious mechanical damage; even a layperson, on close inspection, can discern a bad bend in a body tube, or a huge split in a seam, though finer flaws will surely still be missed.  Things like severe neck damage, missing parts, improperly matched replacement parts, misaligned body-brace joints, and so on, can be extremely costly, and sometimes impossible, to correct -- and these kinds of flaws are not likely to be plainly photographed for an eBay auction.  Indeed, in the majority of eBay auctions, such flaws are likely to have completely escaped the attention of most sellers.

    That said, if you're reading this, you're probably already interested in buying a horn off eBay, and are going to pursue one there, anyway.  And, inasmuch as there's a very good chance that on eBay you'll "save a little to waste alot," it's also true that, if you can find the right horn, you're going to save some money.  With that in mind, here are a few notions that may prove useful to new eBay initiates.
 

- A Note on the Issue of Condition, Playing and Cosmetic -

    Very few horns on eBay are accurately described, and virtually none of them will arrive at your doorstep in anything resembling optimal playing condition.  EBay's saxophone listings are rife with misrepresented and misidentified horns; errors are the rule, rather than the exception.  It's rare that a seller know exactly what s/he has in hand, and even when sellers do know what they have in hand the greed impulse is so great that it often seems to overwhelm even a knowledgable player/seller's critical faculties.  I have personally bought more than thirty saxophones on eBay, about a third of them from music stores or saxophone dealers, and perhaps two of them have arrived in what I would consider "playable" condition. In my own experience, when sellers write "ready to play," they should be read to mean, "it makes a sound."
    A quality overhaul (in the U.S.) is going to cost in excess of $450, with a very few exceptions.  When you pay less than that, generally speaking you can expect to get less than that.  As I've mentioned, of the eBay horns I've bought, roughly one-third have been from listings by music stores, or dealers who specialize in quick repad jobs.  Less than 1 in 10 these horns was in fact playable, despite that nearly all of them were advertised as "ready to play," "plays well," "sounds great," "TONE!" or similar.  The worst aspect of this is that so many eBay buyers are beginners looking for their first horn, and ironically it's the beginner whose needs are the greatest, in terms of needing a horn that is truly as right as it can be.  Adding to that misfortune is that a beginner is the least likely to be able to discern that a playing difficulty s/he is having is due not to lack of ability but lack of a properly set-up horn.  An accomplished player can quickly make a number of adjustments to a badly serviced instrument; a beginner will only get frustrated, and probably give up playing altogether, thinking they lack talent for the instrument.  Hence, even when we have a seemingly optimal situation -- an experienced player selling a horn to an inexperienced one -- on eBay we often get a very sad result.  The professional player hawks the horn as "ready to play" and either says/writes, however disingenuously, "well it sounds great when I play it," (this is actually a somewhat typical cop-out, even off eBay) or demonstrates as much, playing something that will sound good to a beginner.  The beginner buys the horn, plays long enough to get a sound from the horn, becomes discouraged when it takes a train just to play a major scale.  Eventually, that player gives up the saxophone altogether -- all because her/his horn is insufficient to productive study, or because s/he wasn't able to find or afford competent repair.

    This curt and seemingly candid statement, in nearly all cases, should really rightly be followed by, "...and therefore I take no responsibility for the saxophone, its description, or any other aspect of this sale."  That isn't a hard and fast rule, but the statement is itself an overt disclaimer of responsibility, and it's very rare that it can be taken at face value.  Someone who really is just divulging their venture into unfamiliar territory is not going to highlight their ignorance so flatly, as if stating a rule of conduct; there are, of course, occasions on which this is stated and it can be taken at face value -- but how would one know it?  When "I know nothing..." is followed by a statement such as "...but please feel free to write and I'll answer any questions to the best of my ability," if you're interested in the horn then absolutely take that offer to heart.  If any one can help you determine whether you're looking at a gem in the hands of someone who is just unable to aptly describe it, it isn't (in most cases) the seller; it's you, the questions you ask, and your ability to decode and extrapolate from the answers.  When a seller addends their disclaimer that way, by all means write to them; their manner of reply, more than the answers themselves, should tell you much of what you need to know.  After writing, did the seller reply and directly answer your questions?  Or did the seller circle the question, perhaps without even recognizing it had been asked (this is quite common, with sellers of any variety of used/valuable merchandise).  A seller who replies to your letter and doesn't answer the questions you've posed is almost certainly purposefully avoiding your questions; in some cases the seller may not be self-aware of this, but indeed, it's almost certainly what's going on.  We're all familiar with the way that when interviewed, quite often, one hears only what one wants to hear, and filters out the inconvenient or threatening questions.  A basic truth:  the seller wants to sell the instrument.  If s/he's not answering your questions, it's less likely a result of a lack of interest in what you've asked than of a fear of divulging a wayward fact.  There are of course exceptions:  the sellers that don't know what they have, therefore undervalue it themselves, and think that describing it in detail is not worth their time, or even just a good old-fashioned pain in the proverbial.

    There are very few vintage saxophones in existence that have, or have had, no dents.  Generally speaking, the best use for the claim "there are no dents" is as a barometer of the seller's self-awareness, and of their intent toward full disclosure.  A saxophone that has obviously been well-used over the years is going to have either dents or to have had dent repairs, and almost certainly is going to have at least some mild "pings" or "dings."  Most of the time, mild denting is not going to ruin a saxophone, though all dents are going to exercises at least some kind of effects; some may be too fine for human hearing to discern, but certainly any irregularity in an otherwise regular surface is going to affect the way sound waves behave when they reflect or are absorbed by it (or, to split hairs more finely, the way air in the space defined by that surface behaves, and therefore the way that sound waves travelling in that space will behave).  As a general rule, the further away from the mouthpiece you get, the less effect dents of equal relative magnitude are going to have; the exception is when dents appear at sensitive points on the instrument.  A large dent in one area may exercise no noticeable effects, whereas a small dent or irregularity in a critical area may wreak tonal and/or intonational havoc.  Small dents around the front of the bell, or the lip of the bell are unlikely to have much effect on how the horn plays; indeed, a dented or bent lip is unlikely to affect the horn's performance in any way that the player or audience would notice.  Ironically enough, some dents can even exercise beneficial effects on a horn's performance.  Contrary to popular belief, the designers at Conn weren't physics experts, with "black art"-type knowledge of sound wave behavior, and human aural cognition; they were very inventive folks, who were good at figuring out how to make complicated things work, through diligent and intelligent experimentation.  Their designs weren't perfect, nor could early manufacturing techniques manufacture saxophones with the degree of identicalness that can be achieved today -- this is of course part of the charm of vintage horns for quite a few players who thrive on discovering the personal character of an individual horn, with an individual character that comes from being hand hammered, hand-made.  That degree of variation is one of the reasons it's impossible to predict what kind of flaws will really cripple a horn, and what kinds may actually be ironically beneficial.   I've come across certain saxophones, for example, that actually tuned or sounded better with a given mouthpiece when the necks had a bit of pulldown syndrome, or a dent.  Though many repair people don't know how to do it properly, pulldown syndrome can be corrected by a simple procedure; I have on occasion seen horns that played considerably better with mild pulldown syndrome than when the pulldown had been corrected.  The only way to know whether a horn's dents, or other body metal-related injuries, exercise effects that render a horn unbuyable is to actually play it, and go from the intuition one gets from a playtest -- of course that's impossible with an eBay sale.

    Take my word for it or don't:  the word "professional" when placed next to the words "recently" and "serviced" (or synonyms thereof), is of extremely dubious value, unless they are placed next to words like "by Emilio Lyons," or "by Bill Singer," or "by Ernie Sola," or someone in these persons' class as repair technicians.  The sad reality is that the vast majority of saxophone repairpersons are incompetent.  Even some of the most famous saxophone repair persons and dealers in the world consistently perform substandard work, despite having the ability to perform quality repairs.  Case in point:  when I first began playing the saxophone, I had my horn damaged during a flight.  I'd brought my horn on the flight with me, in a hard case, but while deplaning the case dropped all of about 12 inches, from a seat to the floor, and this knocked the lower stack and the B/Bb key tube out of alignment.  I brought the horn to a well known repairman on 48th Street (NYC) who repaired it relatively quickly.  When I playtested the horn, I made some surely-not-altogether-beautiful sounds, and then came back to the counter.  The low-D and middle-D's seemed stuffy and hard to play to me, and I told this to the repairman.  "You need a new horn, my friend," the repairman told me.  "That horn's a piece of junk.  Get rid of it."  Immediately, an employee came trundling over to inform me that the problem was in the design of the tenor saxophone.  The saxophone, he told me, was not designed as a tenor but as an alto.  A stuffy middle-D and D2 were inherent, he said, to all tenor saxophones.  There was nothing they could do about the problem.  I told them that previously the horn had played fine in the D's.  They got annoyed, and did not even pick up the horn to examine it again.  About three weeks later, I was visiting loved ones in Boston, and went to Rayburn's music purely by chance; at the time, I hadn't yet even heard Emilio Lyons' name.  I showed Emilio the horn, and told him about the problems I was having with it.  He got an exacto knife out, some cork, and a bit of liquid shellac.  Inside of 15 minutes, he cut some felt out of the low-C keyguard, put a few shims in the bottom stack, made a minor adjustment to the octave key lever, and when I played the horn the whole horn felt different, magically saved.  That, in a nutshell, is the difference between a competent and an incompetent repair person.
    But, back to eBay, and gauging the value of the claim that a horn that has "recently been professionally serviced...."  There are many repair people out here on the internet who will disagree with me -- most likely because I'm speaking about a practice that is a little too familiar -- but a good thing to do when viewing a horn that's been "recently professionally serviced" is to attempt to identify the pads installed on it.  If they're "standard rivet pads," it's unlikely that the work on the horn was performed to a high standard -- the mere choice of a standard rivet pad for an overhaul (by a modern repairman) signals that the repairman either doesn't know much about saxophone acoustics, and the materials that are now available, or could care less about setting up horns to respond optimally (there are very significant exceptions to this rule, especially in the case of saxophones set-up for classical players, who want a very pared down sound, or players who follow after particular saxophonic heroes such as Lester Young, and are therefore pursuing a very dark, less overtone-rich sound; also players who are particularly concerned with how their horns sound when amplified).  If you're looking at a horn with standard rivet pads, most of the time you can count on paying for a complete overhaul at some point, if for no other reason than that you (unless playing "legit") will probably not be able to resist the temptation to find out how resonators will influence your horn's response for you.
    Similarly, properly prepared and regulated pad seatings and key heights are seldom to be found on a horn whose most recent repairman has installed rivet pads.  Key heights are an extremely important factor in how a saxophone feels when it's played; stuffiness is usually a question of key heights and key height combinations (as in the stuffy D's vignette above), or of air leaks.  Unless the repairman who last touched the instrument adheres to a high standard, the key heights are likely to be poorly adjusted, and there are likely to be pronounced leaks, which means that the tuning and tonal response of the horn are apt to be awkward at best.  And, again, if the repairman who last touched the horn installed standard rivet pads (exceptional circumstances aside), one can in most cases assume either not-very-sensitive ears or a poor standard of saxophone repair (i.e. aural and professional apathy).  It's extremely common to find both rivet-padded and stock-brown plastic (the kind with a heat staked 'rivet' that comes preinstalled on the pads most school-band techs stock) applied to keycups with poor grade adhesives, or poorly applied adhesives, into poorly levelled and badly abused keycups, along with a host of other pathological maladies.  While gigantic, absolutely max-sized resos may not be the set-up that best suits your ears or needs, at least you can be certain that some skill went into their installation, since it is simply more difficult to install pads with severely oversized resonators than pads with a stock (or no) resonator; at the very least, the cup must be centered over the tone hole, and the pad skillfully seated, in order to produce a leak-free seal.  Most school band techs will not install severely oversized, or over-large resonators simply because of the amount of extra work, and attention to detail it requires.
   Another pad "tell" is the presence of a pad on a horn that's significantly thicker than the pads that were original equipment on any given horn.  A vintage Conn, for example, with brown plastic resonators, may very well have a pad installed that is much thicker than the "Reso-pads" or their predecessors (about .160" or .165" in latter case).  A horn with pads on it that are significantly thicker than the original components will almost certainly have had its keys bent to accomodate the fatter pad thickness, and this makes returning the key cups to their original dimensions a problem; more significantly, an improperly chosen pad thickness suggests that a horn has had a significant amount uncareful maintenance in the past.  The importance of past repair is highlighted by this reality:  "a significant amount of uncareful maintenance" need be only one incompetent tech.  When work has been done poorly on a saxophone, especially by its last technician, you will foot the bill to clean up that person's mess when you bring it to a repairman who is competent.
 

    Even new horns cannot be counted on to be shipped in truly playable condition -- indeed some new retail horns are especially unlikely to be shipped in playable, or dependable condition.  My own Reference 54, bought by mail order, came out of the box in completely unplayable condition.  The 54 in fact needed to be readjusted three times in its first day of play, thanks to the poor cork and felt materials installed on it, and their haphazard installation.  The reality is that quality repair is done by only a very small percentage of those who fall under that category of "professional" repair person.  Indeed there are probably only a dozen saxophone repair persons in the world who do truly competent work -- the rest tend either to do either poor pad installation, linkage regulation, tone hole and key cup levelling, or to use substandard materials. Quality repair is expensive, over $600 for a premium overhaul from most vintage saxophone specialists (and even on occasion from incompetent repair persons).  Some of the most esteemed repairmen in the US charge as much as $900 for their most premium overhauls.  Indeed the reason that master techs can charge that much for an overhaul is the overwhelming predominance of incompetent repair persons, and the understanding on the part of professional players that the distance between "close enough" and "tip-top" repair is immense, almost as absolute as between "wet" and "dry."  There's very little middle ground.  Once you've played a horn that's seating perfectly, without key cup heights holding the sound back, poorly adjusted springs and action, or any number of seeingly more innocuous but nevertheless crucial oversights, nothing less than tip-top condition will satsify you -- the difference between "good," or "average," and "great" is that vast.
    If  an eBay seller writes in the listing, "professionally repaired," without referencing the repair person, it's unlikely that the tech is one of the competent repair persons to whom I've alluded, or a repairperson whose work belongs in that class.  The players who are taking their horns to top-flight repairers know the value of their techs' work, and know that other players will recognize that value by name.  It's unlikely that a seller who isn't a player would take their horn to a top-flight repairperson, as most laypersons visit their local music store when they have an instrument about which they're in the dark, and they are after a bargain rather than fine craftsmanship.  Local music store instrument techs generally either cannot or do not perform quality repair; music stores' clientele would not pay the fees that are required to fairly compense a repairman for first-rate repair, nor would (or could) most music store owners be able to afford to hire a truly competent saxophone mechanic.  By the time most techs reach a point where their work is truly top-notch, they have also realized they can make a much better -- and fairer -- wage by striking out on their own.

    The best advice here, when someone states that a saxophone has recently been repaired, or overhauled, is probably this:  attend to the evidence you have at hand, and fact check as much of it as is possible.  In the case of service to a horn, and the degree to which that service may or may not have made a horn "ready to play," pad and resonator choices can be strong evidence when it comes to casting doubt.  Whether or not good resonator and pad choices can be depended on to indicate a high standard of repair is less certain.  A horn repadded with Chanu pads and oversized domed Pisoni resonators is probably going to have had a good quality of work done on it -- these materials are extremely high quality, expensive, and relatively hard to find -- but researching repair materials is not the same as researching repair methods.  If a seller whose knowledge of saxophones is not extensive writes, "may need a few pads," the statement should be taken to indicate the need for a complete overhaul.  Laypersons cannot tell that a pad is damaged, or needs replacing, unless it is literally falling apart; if a horn has a couple of pads that have rotted away, one can almost certainly count on most or all of the pads being cracked, hard, or well on their way to disintegrating.
    When you read a saxophone listing that claims recent repair, or a recent overhaul, don't be afraid to write to the seller and ask about the repair materials used -- the resonator choice, so forth -- and let your intuition be your guide.  You don't have to know what you're talking about to ask a question, or even to understand the answer in order to gain useful information.  The truth is probably that most people are not clever enough to disguise disingenuousness very well, even when making what they think is passing effort to do so.  My experience has been that when someone is lying to you they do know it, even if they can't admit it to themselves, and this comes out in one form or another in their correspondences.

    Another place for a reality check.  The fact is, there are very few original lacquer horns to be found on eBay, or for that matter on the open vintage market at large.  Before the late 80s, and prior to the advent of eBay, the vintage saxophone market scarcely existed.  Vintage horn shopping on a large scale is a fairly new phenomenon.  Prior to the the spread of information about vintage saxophones -- in large part thanks to the internet -- few people had enough knowledge about vintage saxophones to even be concerned about whether a saxophone had been relacquered; those that did have that knowledge (i.e. sellers) had to answer to a buying public that in most cases didn't care if a horn was relacquered.  People buying what we now call vintage horns most often had basically the same concerns as those shopping for new horns, save that theirs was a search for a horn that was of professional quality at a lower-than-new price; most buyers sought a horn that was shiny, and looked new, but at a "used" (as opposed to "vintage") price.  Professional quality horns of the 20s, even through the late 70s, have commonly been relacquered to satisfy those buyers -- or owners, ordering relacquerings under similar rationale -- as well as to attend to another need.   It wasn't uncommon, for example, for band leaders to demand that their horn sections have their horns relacquered in order that their instruments would appear spiffily uniform on the bandstand -- this is one of the reasons one finds so many of the Conn "Chu Berry" and New Wonder models which were originally silver-plated stripped of their silver plating and gold-lacquered.  A similar mentality probably governed the majority of orchestral and public performance situations, something like an "a sparkly instrument to suit a sparkly occasion" mentality.  The result is that, now that vintage collectors exert a considerable force in the market, because collectible horns in original lacquer are relatively scarce (especially on eBay), and because vintage horn collectors are not much different from vintage whatever-have-you collectors in their fetishizing of "the original," resale value is closely tied to lacquer condition ("original" versus "relacquer").
    Perhaps not unrelatedly, on eBay and at large in music stores -- vintage sax specialty stores seem generally to be quite a bit more discerning -- sellers tout any horn with a legible engraving as "original lacquer."  Without going into issues about the definition of a term like "original lacquer," it's probably safe to say that at least one of three, if not more than half, of the horns listed as "original lacquer" on eBay have in fact been relacquered.  The best test of whether a horn's lacquer is original -- untouched save for wear from use -- is to actually have a familiarity with how an engraving feels to the touch, on a particular model/brand, when the lacquer is original.  Additionally, a familiarity with the lacquering habits and the history of lacquering methods used at various factories at various periods is indispensable.  An original lacquer Couf's, or Couesnon Monopole's engraving, for example, does not at all resemble an original Buescher "Big B"'s or Conn "viii" series 6M's engraving, in the criteria by which originalness should be appraised.

    Warnings aside, the most useful thing one can say about relacquering is probably that it isn't the bogey-practice it's often made out to be, when done carefully by a technician that makes a concerted effort to avoid removing heavy amounts of metal.  The dangers with a relacquer are essentially two-fold:  1) that the saxophone had significant damages repaired prior to relacquering, and the repair evidence has been concealed by the relacquering, and 2) that at the time of the relacquering the horn was machine buffed to a point where the instrument vibrates too violently for the pads to seat properly.  I've had quite a few relaquers come through my hands -- the majority of their sellers touting them as "original," whether on eBay, in a music store, or from a private seller -- and I have yet to own or repair a relacquered professional level vintage horn that was not an outstanding player once properly adjusted (this is not to say they were all, or any, "perfect" instruments).  Regarding the first danger, above, we have to come back to the fundamental disadvantage in buying on eBay; the only way to discern whether a relacquer is hiding meaningful damage is to closely inspect and play it, which of course just cannot be done when playing on eBay.  With perhaps a few exceptions, a horn that has evidence of meaningful trauma is just not going to be photographed in a way that reveals that trauma when sellers list horns on eBay -- in recent months, I have seen a small number of sellers beginning to make a real effort to fully and accurately document their horns; these are invariably either vintage horn dealers or collectors, and they remain in the minority, even among their peers.
 

    On one occasion, I did buy a horn from a person who cashed my check, and then never sent the instrument.  I did get my money back, following a long and not very pleasant process involving phone calls to police in the seller's area, emails to others who had bid on the seller's auctions (none of whom had received the items for which they'd paid) and a host of other hassles.  I also posted a negative feedback to the seller.  To my surprise, mine was the seller's first negative feedback.  Also to my surprise, gradually the other buyers began posting their negative feedback, over the course of about a month.  My guess is that, aside from other more strategical, refund-related reasons, one of the things that happened was that the other gypped users were hesitant to post negative feedback until they could observe whether the seller posted a retaliatory negative feeback to my account.  As any self-aware and cautious buyer knows, a negative feedback can be devastating to a seller who does a small volume of business on eBay.  Buyers may rest assured that sellers know this quite well.
    It's probably reasonable to guess that, in a user's eBay feedback files, close to or more than half of the auctions officially completed never have a feedback attached to them.  When buyers or sellers are dissatisfied with their transactions, it's much more likely that they'll opt to leave no feeback rather than a "neutral" or "negative" -- or even a tempered "positive" one.  In my own experience, the only way to avoid retaliatory feebacks is to leave very specific and factual reviews when a transaction turns out poorly.  Even then, an angry seller or buyer whose feeback has been besmirched may retaliate with disingenuous denials and revenge feedbacks of her/his own.  Most experienced eBayers know this, and the urge to squeeze more nickels out of every change purse overwhelms any impulse toward consumer protections.
    Add to this that there is a dependable and easy way to avoid negative feedbacks, which is practiced by the majority of experienced eBayers: withholding feedback until the other transactor has already left feedback.  Feedback can't be corrected, once it's been left, except in extreme cases where eBay feels the circumstances are unusual enough to make a change; this almost never -- if indeed it ever -- happens.  By withholding feedback, users both implicitly maintain the threat of retaliatory feedback, and ensure the maintenance of a high rating; if a user has a negative, or critical comment to make, the threat of the retaliation will certainly discourage that user from posting, or encourage a less than fully candid review.
    Another problem with jumping to conclusions based on another user's feedback is that feedback archives are not the hermetically sealed time-capsules eBay policy pages make them out to be.  Sellers are eBay's bread and butter.  They make money off commissions taken from the sellers.  Obviously, there are no sales -- or commissions -- without buyers, but it is the seller's dollar that is eBay-taxed.  By manipulating eBay policies, and/or by simply lying their disingenuous heads off, even egregiously bad sellers can project a squeaky clean image through their eBay feedback archives when they find ways to have eBay strike inconvenient "negatives" from their accounts.
    When it comes to reading other users' feedback, the most useful information is found not in the feedbacks themselves, but in the responses of sellers to negative or critical feedback.  A seller who, for example, responds to dissatisfied buyers' remarks with insults and heated denials is very unlikely to have regarded that buyer with anything resembling respect at any time, before or after the critical feedback.  Remember:  if the buyer is complaining about the object s/he was sent, the seller was not ripped off; the seller received his/her money.  Outrage on the part of a seller is about reputation, regardless of whether the complaint was just or unjust.  In a case where there is any doubt, the best idea is to email the seller, with one or two reasonably uncomplicated questions, and then to gauge one's feeling from the seller's way of replying (or not replying, as the case may be).  For those unskilled in the art of reading lies, always assume there is a healthy blaze when a person approaches you excitedly, shuffling you up the block toward a smokestack spouting non-sequiters, and promising you there is nothing on fire there.  Another little tip, from an ex-poker player:  honest people are apt to apologize, and/or take responsibility for their roles in conflagrations; liars, if you buy their side of it, are never wrong.

    Selling with a guarantee that the auctioned item is as advertised is almost standard practice, at this point, on eBay.  There are very few sellers who won't provide some kind of return policy in the event that the item you buy doesn't match the description.  A seller who sells items and lists them as "sold as is" is, as a general rule, not to be trusted, no matter how much money appears to be being saved.  A seller who sells items "as is," and then responds to a negative feedback with a retort like "Listing clearly stated 'as is'!  Idiot!  F-!" should be avoided at all costs.  That seller has no interest or desire to do business in good faith, and indeed doesn't do so.  Bad sellers may happen to have a quality item on hand, in which case bad faith may not become a factor -- a killer find is a killer find no matter where one finds it -- however, reason would dictate that, more often, bad faith sellers attract and stock bad items.
 
 

- A WORD ABOUT PHOTOS -

    If a seller can take one picture, s/he can probably just as easily take two.  Putting aside cases of persons who really do know nothing about saxophones, and wouldn't know what to photograph, most sellers who post bad photographs know that they are posting bad photographs.  When you see photos that have clearly been heavily edited, or that are blurry, or have been taken from a useless angle, or -- especially -- when a photo seems to have been heavily edited and yet the outcome is obscurity, something wrong is going on.  Perhaps the funniest combination of description and photos in a listing is when a seller claims to be a professional player, and to love the instrument, and fills their description with exclamation marks, yet includes only a single blurry/useless photo.  This is kind of like when a person is lying and shaking their head "no," when their mouth is saying "yes."  It's bizarrely contradictory, behavior:  "Here is the greatest saxophone on earth!  And one photo of it, taken completely carelessly!"  It just does not compute; it signals dishonesty or, just as bad, complete lack of self-awareness or attention.  Again, here, the best evidence is not what's in the photo itself, but the way that the photos are chosen for, and appear in, the listing itself.
    On the whole, it pays to be on the lookout for inconsistencies in representation.  If a person hollered, "Look at me!" and then suddenly hid some aspect of her/himself from sight, one would know what to think.  The same goes for a person hollering "Look at my horn!" who then only wants to show parts, or only the blurry half-image of the horn itself.
    Then again, there are also sellers who are just "technology-challenged."  On eBay, you have to make the call, and there are quite a few to make.
 
 

- ON SHIPPING -

    The absolute bare minimum of care in shipping:  (1) the saxophone must be shipped with some form of neck plug, as without one the octave key mechanism will invariably be seriously damaged, and in some cases completely broken off;  (2) the sax must be padded in the case, so that it doesn't bang around in the case, hitting the case walls, during shipping;  (3) the neck must be secured in the accessories compartment of the case, or a part of the case where it will not get loose and bang around during shipping.  To deposit the neck in the bell, wrapped in something, is not acceptable; the possibility that the neck will be dented or crushed or otherwise damaged is simply too great.  (4) The entire case must be completely suspended in shock-absorbent packing materials.  Don't be shy, or equivocal, about asking sellers to follow those packing demands when discussing shipping.  Sellers who don't know about saxophones will never happen by chance to follow those packing musts.  The majority of the time, even when a seller promises to do all of that, s/he will fail to actually do it.  Explain clearly that you understand it may sound somewhat demanding, and may be slightly time consuming, but that without those precautions it's not only possible but probable that the saxophone will be damaged in transit. Cybersax.com has a very useful webpage with shipping instructions, as that page can be easily referenced when sending an email to a seller.  I'll also eventually get around to (time permitting) post a shipping instruction page here, intended for forwarding to sellers of saxophones who are unfamiliar with the specific issues involved with shipping a valuable vintage instrument.
    A note on vintage cases:  there are a few brands of vintage tenor and baritone cases where the lip of the bell contacts the front edge of the case, without padding, so that any hit to the front of the case transmits directly to the bell of the instrument.  These cases are almost guaranteed to put a dent in the lip of the bell, if the case isn't properly suspended in soft materials when shipped.  If a horn is going to be airborne at any point during its journey, it's going to take some heavy hits from airline baggage handlers; it's not a question of "whether" but of "how hard," "how far," and how many times it's going to be dropped.
 
 

- INFORMED BUYING / RESOURCE MATERIALS -

    At the very least, there are about 4 or 5 documents and/or websites that really should be examined before buying a vintage saxophone on eBay.  Here are a few of them:

The Saxophone Buyer's Guide 2000 - by Jason Dumars - Dumars' very useful Buyer's Guide covering mostly vintage American horns. - This is a very good starting point, and seems to be the reference point from which most beginners begin their vintage shopping experience, but I'd caution buyers against taking Dumars' specific opinions (or any one's, including my own) on saxophone models too literally, or as absolute truth.  The best buys on the eBay market are, in most cases,  not among the horns highlighted in Dumars' guide, perhaps specifically because his guide has been so influential in increasing attention to certain vintage horn makes and models.  Some of the finest, and most consistent, models and makes are not to be found in Dumars' guide, and their omission is worth noting by a vintage horn shopper; where his widely-read guide has not mentioned certain makes & models, it has not been a factor in influencing their pricing.

Vintage Saxophone Gallery - very good pictures of a wide array of vintage and hard to find horns, as well as information about various vintages and production periods - having a visual reference point is extremely important when buying a saxophone based largely on pictures posted to the WWW.  I have yet to run across a more complete gallery than this one.

Dr. Rick - Dr. Rick used to have a storefront business in Greenwich Village, NYC, that has closed its doors.  His website has articles on some relatively rarely approached topics, and has the most useful lacquer appraisal article I've yet seen on the web.  There's also an article on "stencils" which is a good starting, or jumping-off, point for those who are interested in seeking alternative routes to owning professional quality vintage American horns.  The one thing I'd say about Dr. Rick's stencil article, because so many buyers are currently considering stencils as alternatives to increasingly expensive 6M's and 10M's, is that Dr. Rick's Conn-identification comments really apply only to an extremely small percentage of the Conn stencils in circulation.  Most Conn stencils do not have the tuning ring on the neck, for example, and the vast majority of the examples I've seen have varying types of neck and bow brace designs.  Similar irregularities and inconsistencies (among the horns) apply to most stencil lines.
 

Please note:  despite some high and mighty tone here, I myself remain a relative newcomer to the world of vintage saxophones, and the wealth of history and knowledge that exists regarding them.  I know from personal experience that the internet and all the information about vintage horns on it represent only the tip of the iceberg, regarding vintage horns, their design, and history.  This article, like any other that you'll find on this website, is written in the spirit of promoting informed buying, and a higher standard of conduct in internet saxophone buying and selling.  If there is anything amiss here, or that seems to require correcting or appending, please don't hesitate to email me (link below) and weigh in with your opinion.  If I agree that a change should be made, I'll certainly make that change when time permits.  I'd be especially interested to hear about other resources that might be linked to this page, to provide further useful reference materials to potential beginning (or for that matter 'expert') eBay buyers.  Please understand that if you do email me about any article, there is a chance that your email, or parts of it, will be published here; the act of emailing itself (i.e. when emailing in reference to, and concerning, the articles in this area) should be regarded as equivalent to the granting of permissions to reproduce that correspondence on this website.

                                                            - P. Tung, Just Saxes (New Orleans)