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These show up rarely but I found one in eBay this week that I thought I had a chance to buy. The auction went from $791 to $1025 within the last 10 seconds. That was a couple of hundred more than I was willing to pay for a war weary horn. Am I losing touch or was my $900 top limit not realistic? Anybody else bidding? Did one of y'all buy it?

Those little tubas are great playing horns. If I would have been bidding, I would have stopped well under $600. There have been some real 'stupid' prices on the auction for a while now. I buy to resell. It's getting really tough to get a good buy.

bloke wrote: I'm sure you know that the discontinued "Bach Mercedes" was made with the same tooling, but in Elkhart, Indiana in Bach plant #2.

Nope. That's news to me. And good to know as well. I'm really enjoying the VMI my church bought, but my days of schelpping it around are numbered. I bought a 621 a while back and after 4 months went back to my Miraphone. Just couldn't learn to like the sound it made. I was afraid the same thing might happen with the Olds and I would have to take a loss if I paid too much. The VMI sounds great though. If you get a line on something you think might interest me let me know. Memphus is only 6 hours.

I had one of these once, right after high school -- someone in the community donated to the school a beat up old version of this. All in all, it wasn't so bad off, but it wasn't playable -- it was missing the 3rd valve. Apart from that, it had a good crease in the bell, but nothing un-fixable. My director was going to turn it into a lamp, but he agreed to give it to me for free if I would restore it to playing condition.

I took it to a local shop in Baltimore (not BBC), and paid $800 to have the valve replaced, dent work done, etc. and otherwise bring it back to life. I didn't use it much since I was in college (and had other tubas available to me), but it was a fun horn, and it always pleasantly surprised me. Not the greatest tuba out there, but better than I'd expected.

Five years later, I used it as a partial trade for another tuba at another store and got $700 for it (I don't know how much he re-sold it for). So I figured in the end, it cost me $20 per year to have a tuba, even if not the best one. Totally worth it to me.

Haha, oh yeah...my point? Your $900 top limit is realistic, and you can get one for less I'm sure.