Dotneck Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 I've looked at a couple ebay ads and I'm confused. These is an ebay seller who has "as new" Gibson guitars. The guitars are all described as fresh from the factory, never been owned...just picked up from the original retailer who shipped it to me shortly after receiving it from Gibson. This guy has eighteen Gibsons listed (including some interesting custom shop models). So...obviously these must be sold as used guitars without a warranty since these resellers are not authorized Gibson dealers. But I don't understand where they getting the guitars. Why would an authorized dealer buy guitars from Gibson and wholesale them to another dealer without trying to sell them. Can the original dealer make a buck on them by selling them cheap enough that another dealer can also make a buck by selling them on ebay as used guitars? Then why wouldn't the first dealer sell them and make the buck? This arrangement doesn't make sense to me and makes me suspicious of buying a guitar from the ebay dealer? The one that caught my attention is an SJ-200 that has a Buy-it-now just south of $3000. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GotTheSilver Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 This practice is becoming more common, and is the result of Gibson's dealer policies. You may have heard that there are significantly fewer independent (read non-Guitar Center) Gibson dealers these days than there were a few years ago. One reason is that Gibson requires dealers to sell a certain amount of guitars every year to keep their dealership agreement. This is common, however I understand that the number of guitars the dealers must sell is quite high. In addition, if they want to get certain guitars, Gibson makes them take other guitars that are likely to be less easy to sell. End result - the dealer has to take more guitars than they can reasonably be expected to sell, and get stuck with guitars they can't move. Rather than losing their dealership, these dealers take the required amount of guitars from Gibson and quickly move several of them to these secondary dealers at cost. These guitars are brand new, but the secondary dealers cannot sell them as such because they are not authorized Gibson dealers. So the secondary sellers sell them as "as new" on eBay or even in their brick and mortar stores. Oddly, there have actually become some well established and well respected secondary sellers, ones I actually would not hesitate to buy from if they had what I wanted at a good price. The sad thing is that this really screws over the authorized Gibson dealers that work hard to make a living. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
62burst Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 This practice is becoming more common, and is the result of Gibson's dealer policies... ... -> ...The sad thing is that this really screws over the authorized Gibson dealers that work hard to make a living. +1, a pretty decent explanation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onewilyfool Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 AND....no warranty...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
modoc_333 Posted February 6, 2011 Share Posted February 6, 2011 some dealers also put them on ebay themselves... claiming to be a secondary seller so they don't get in trouble with the big G. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BigKahune Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 . The situation is utterly rid!culous. Gibson isn't fostering any goodwill with the continuation of the distribution they've developed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
onewilyfool Posted February 7, 2011 Share Posted February 7, 2011 This is a "top down" problem......... So many mom & pops out of the Gibson business because of corporate policies. Gryphon was a 20 year dealer who dropped the line because of these demands on the dealers, AND the high price of Gibsons. It's really a shame....but look, Gibson doesn't lose, look they get to move more products at no loss to themselves, AND they don't have to warranty the products!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.