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Considering making my alma mater an offer on an old tuba they have. Anybody have any experience with buying a horn from an institution? Not even sure if I can, but I'm pretty sure it's just sitting around and not getting used. It's a public, flagship state university, FWIW. Not sure if there is any legal rigamarole I will have to go through or what. Any experiences, comments, suggestions?

In NYS, Instruments are the property of the State and when retired from service can be sold at a State auction.

Hm, thanks for the input. I figured it would be red tape-y, but I'll send an email to the department anyway.

What's the tuba?

In SD, items are given to surplus and sold at auction. The instruments don't belong to the university. They belong to the state/board of regents.

I once bought a tuba from Coastal Carolina. It was very easy. Just made the low brass professor an offer, and he took it, and I gave him a check made out to the university and took the tuba. Our alma mater is a lot bigger and might be more complicated, though.

My thoughts exactly, Michael. Brett, it's an old Meinl Weston 46 that was (7 years ago) used as the "learn F tuba" tuba. The sixth valve paddle is broken off so it's permanently taped in the off position. I'm not sure it's been used in 6 years or so. It has many issues, and the university owns many more F tubas, so I'm somewhat hopeful. The current (my old) tuba prof is on his way out as well, so I'm thinking this might be my best chance to get it.

Where I work not only would the tuba have to go through the surplus auction process mentioned above, but the music department wouldn't get the money. It would go into a general fund that would not benefit us in any way. So the only time I have gotten rid of instruments was when we needed the space they were inhabiting more than the money we might get for them (two old Hammond organs and a grand piano with a cracked soundboard).