near-mint 70's miraphone on ebay

[Tom Eshelman]

What's a fair price for a used near-mint 70's miraphone 186-4u ? http://www.ebay.com/itm/1970s-MIRAFONE- ... RTM1562569" target="_blank" target="_blank

[bighonkintuba]

That's standard practice for advertising/describing instruments on trombone forum using the rationale that another (dishonest) party could potentially use the full serial number to claim that the instrument was stolen from them. I'm not sure it's an effective strategy or if it's even a problem that exists, but I suppose it couldn't hurt to provide just partial serial #s.

Must have been a trade-in (UMI-affiliate seller) why would they hide the serial number?

[bighonkintuba]

Good point!

That "standard practice" also masks the possibility that the seller is publicly offering something that WAS stolen.

[swillafew]

I have thought the same thing about the serial number whenever I see the xxx thing. It's common here too.