Flipping guitars

[Oinkus]

Re: Flipping guitars

Craigslist freaks spend almost every second of the day and night buying and selling for next to zero profit , keep your job and figure out a way to make it better and more enjoyable. Flipping gear is pretty much a no win scenario, ton of work very small profit and it will take the enjoyment out of getting stuff too.

 

[ericmeyer4]

Re: Flipping guitars

Craigslist freaks spend almost every second of the day and night buying and selling for next to zero profit , keep your job and figure out a way to make it better and more enjoyable. Flipping gear is pretty much a no win scenario, ton of work very small profit and it will take the enjoyment out of getting stuff too.

I hate trying to deal with flippers when I list of Craigslist. "I'll give you a quarter of your asking price, but I can come get it now!" Neither of those are appealing to me. I have a job and responsibilities. I'm not leaving work to give gear away lol.

 

[jon the art guy]

Re: Flipping guitars

flippers be screwing up housing prices. I know, different subject.

I just assume that flippers are the bane of the guitar industry as much as they are the real estate industry.

 

[chadd]

Re: Flipping guitars

The only way I see someone making a living at it now is stripping them and selling the parts for more than the guitar is worth. And even that model has a limited life span with Fender starting to sell bodies and necks directly to consumers.

 

[MkIII Renegade]

Re: Flipping guitars

You could potentially survive flipping cars, and potentially thrive flipping houses, but it would take a lot of risk, and a lot of headaches.

Guitars? You'd be one skinny MF (from utter starvation) unless you are very talented at freeloading off of your family/friends/gf. :lol: I'd rather flip burgers.

 

[jtees4]

Re: Flipping guitars

I have been buying/selling/trading for about 5 years. At times it is a good PART TIME Income, and at other times (like now)....it is totally DEAD. So bottom line, it's great as a money making hobby. It is also a great way of trying things out, I have changed a lot of my preconceived ideas about what I like because i tried things I never would have tried. So it's great, just not a full time job. BUT it did turn my money spending GAS into money making GAS. I have learned to only buy when the price is right, luckily other guitarists don't do this....and thus I find lots of stuff to buy.

 

[ehdwuld]

Re: Flipping guitars

Ok so I sometimes pick up other people's gear
Like the fellow recently that got out of gigging

I got all his stuff
He gave me an inventory of what he had and what he wanted for all of it in mass

I looked up each item for what it was going for used

Then I added it all together and subtracted 35%

This was my counter offer

My plan was to sell what I didn't want or need to make the part I wanted less expensive

More like buying the contents of a self storage unit

It only works if you get a stupid deal on a lot of stuff

You can then bury your losses in the quantity of gear

*(Sent from my durned phone!)*

 

[Brian Griffin]

Re: Flipping guitars

Why don't you give guitar lessons to kids or adults if you are really good. All profit, no startup capital.

 

[HKZSquared]

Re: Flipping guitars

I've been trying to sell custom pickguards for months now, spent $200 on parts to build two starter/practice guitar guards and I've advertised those and my services all over to no avail. Luckily I'm still in school, so no day job to quit but what I thought would be easy work to get me off my a$$ and making some spare money has left me in the hole. Every day I basically wonder: hey, maybe today will be the day an order comes... I hope. By the end of the day I'm just hoping that by the time I'm out of hs and college with my degrees and luthiership certification, that there'll still be a market for guitar building... I'm just glad I'm going to get a degree in theory and hope I can at least find work teaching music or something...

 

[DreX]

Re: Flipping guitars

I've been trying to sell custom pickguards for months now, spent $200 on parts to build two starter/practice guitar guards and I've advertised those and my services all over to no avail. Luckily I'm still in school, so no day job to quit but what I thought would be easy work to get me off my a$$ and making some spare money has left me in the hole. Every day I basically wonder: hey, maybe today will be the day an order comes... I hope. By the end of the day I'm just hoping that by the time I'm out of hs and college with my degrees and luthiership certification, that there'll still be a market for guitar building... I'm just glad I'm going to get a degree in theory and hope I can at least find work teaching music or something...

Put some pics of your work in your sig.

 

[HKZSquared]

Flipping guitars

View attachment 54212
Here's the two I built so far.

 

[DreX]

Re: Flipping guitars

Oh, custom wiring, I thought you meant like custom graphics. That would be a tough, a lot of people who would think to mod their guitar would also be willing to tackle this themselves.

The MIJ strat in my avatar has a really interesting pick guard, it's two pieces of clear plastic, a top and bottom, with a fine piece of fabric containing the graphic in between them, and the end result looks amazing. I bet it could do all sort of neat graphics with clean pick guards.

 

[HKZSquared]

Re: Flipping guitars

Looks like a really interesting strat! But yeah, just custom wiring

 

[jimzucco]

Re: Flipping guitars

Ever consider maybe flipping more than just guitars? And I don't mean just other musical instruments. My wife has been buying all manner of things from clothing to electronics to musical instruments for about two years now and she's making some really good money doing it. She definitely makes a lot more than minimum wage and it's very enjoyable for both of us. Not to mention we recently found a Les Paul copy for fifteen dollars that I just sold on eBay for two hundred fifty dollars. And that's not an isolated incident. Its a lot of work but if you branch out to other items it is viable.

 

[DreX]

Re: Flipping guitars

Ever consider maybe flipping more than just guitars? And I don't mean just other musical instruments. My wife has been buying all manner of things from clothing to electronics to musical instruments for about two years now and she's making some really good money doing it. She definitely makes a lot more than minimum wage and it's very enjoyable for both of us. Not to mention we recently found a Les Paul copy for fifteen dollars that I just sold on eBay for two hundred fifty dollars. And that's not an isolated incident. Its a lot of work but if you branch out to other items it is viable.

That's sounds like a lot of fun, like DIY pawn stars, but then again it's sad to think your earnings are the result of many hundreds of people being either desperate or stupid.

 

[uOpt]

Re: Flipping guitars

How about, stick to innovative designs, materials, make some prototypes [...] and eventually find a factory in china where they can manufacture this cheap and fast?

No way that's gonna work out. The Asian factory will make a couple good prototypes for you and then when you want to deliver to your customers it is all random. The expensive ingredients you bought and supply to the factory get replaced and the people now making your production stuff are not the ones that made your prototypes. Those are working on the next customer's prototypes.

IMHO people looking for retro stuff are a thing of the past... New kids want new sounds, new tech, new features, new designs.

Such as?

 

[Voodoogumbo]

Re: Flipping guitars

That's sounds like a lot of fun, like DIY pawn stars, but then again it's sad to think your earnings are the result of many hundreds of people being either desperate or stupid.

...sounds like the insurance world

p.s. Regarding your MIJ pickguard, is the cloth glued down to the initial plastic layer of the pickguard? It might be kind of cool to put a vinyl decal on a setup like that for one of my "projects."