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It's what the ad says...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/HIRSBRUNNER-TUB ... 43aee81099

The guy reposted the horn for $2,800 so I bid on it last night and won. I'm somewhat surprised no one else bid at that price. Granted it looks well-used, but I regularly see garden variety Miraphone 186s in $3,500 range that aren't in that much better shape. Can anyone shed some light on why so little interest was shown? Is it because the seller appears to be clueless or do the photographs show something critically wrong with it? Perhaps placing the ad in the wrong category didn't help. Can anyone surmise the age? I know it's a 192 BB flat.

I exchanged messages with him that were full of typos. I'm guessing he does his ebaying from his phone. I will post whether or not the horn is a diamond in the rough or a boondoggle soon enough.

P.S. Does anyone know if Eric Peterson is still an active instrument repairman in the Twin Cities? I searched the internet and found a phone number and an address in south Minneapolis. I thought I'd check here.

Thanks!

Joe

It would be great if you post about the results when you get the horn. A lot of us were interested in this one but did not want to take the risk. Good luck!

Thanks Jason. All good points. I thought $4300 was too high, but $2800 seemed worthy of a risk since I live about 2 hours away and he agreed in advance to let me pick it up free of charge. I've talked to him on the phone and he sounds like your average Norwegian farmer. He was driving when we talked, so I didn't interrogate him about how he got it, but I doubt it was anything nefarious. We've tentatively planned to meet tomorrow night, so I will ask him how he got it then.

I picked up the horn today. It's in good shape. All the slides moves and once I oiled the valves they worked fine. It's in playable condition. I still want to get it cleaned and tuned up. It doesn't look like much, but that's mostly because of wear to the silver. He bought it at the State of Minnesota surplus auction, there was a lot of three tubas. My guess is it was used by the Minnesota State Band. I am going to contact them and see if my hunch is right.