How to Buy an Unrestored Wurlitzer: Risks, Prices & Scams
Buying an unrestored Wurlitzer electronic piano can be intimidating, especially when you’re shopping through Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, or another private seller. This guide explains how to evaluate the financial risks, research local prices, recognize suspicious listings, and buy a Wurlitzer that you can resell if the restoration project doesn’t work out.
This article is Part 2 in a series. Read Part 1: How to Buy a Wurlitzer Electronic Piano from an Independent Seller
So: how can you tell if an unrestored Wurlitzer that is listed online is worth buying?
There is a short answer and a long answer. First, the short answer:
Just about every Wurly on earth is worth buying if you like it and it is in your budget. There are almost no problems with a Wurlitzer that are impossible to fix, and all of the consumable parts can and should be replaced anyway. Once you replace the consumable parts and fix the miscellaneous issues, your Wurlitzer will play amazingly. It is the best instrument on earth and you will be so happy that you took the time and the trouble to get one.
Careful readers may have noticed a couple of phrases: just about, almost. Those phrases are key to the rest of this guide.
Although we can give general advice about evaluating Wurlitzers, we are constantly surprised and impressed to discover new and interesting ways in which a keyboard can be broken. There is simply no way to predict what is wrong with a keyboard—short of opening it up and looking inside, of course. But if you are purchasing the keyboard from an online platform, inspection may be impossible.
If this concerns you, the best strategy is to buy a Wurlitzer at a price that leaves you with a way out if you bring it home and discover that it needs more work than you’re willing to put in.
Should you buy an unrestored Wurlitzer?
At Tropical Fish, we are willing to fix just about any Wurlitzer we find because we know what the endpoint can be: a touch-responsive, tonally excellent instrument that inspires you to play your best. Of course, you have to put in the time, and it can be a ridiculous amount of time. There is no guarantee that each step in the process follows smoothly from the last one. Nor is there any guarantee that you won’t run into a part that needs to be creatively sourced or fabricated.
If you buy a Wurly from Tropical Fish, or if you bring your Wurly to us for restoration, we will take care of all the questions and uncertainty for you, and in the end you will have an amazing electronic piano that sounds great and is as satisfying to play as any finely-made instrument.
But if you are reading this guide, you are probably trying to accomplish all this on a budget. That is completely fine with us, and we’re not going to pretend that you can’t also have an excellent keyboard at the end of the process. But your process will be different than ours, and it’s different from the person who outsources all of the buying and restoration to a shop like Tropical Fish. Because the thing that you can’t have when you’re on a budget is the friction-free elimination of uncertainty that comes with buying a restored instrument.
So, in this guide, we’re not going to really tell you what to look for when you evaluate an instrument, and we’re not going to tell you how to repair a Wurlitzer once you have it. Instead, we’re going to explore the buying process, and advise on how you can become more confident about your ability to choose the Wurlitzer that you’ll want to play and repair.
Understanding the risks of buying a used Wurlitzer
When you buy a Wurly on a budget, you’re going to undertake a little risk. For instance, there is the risk that the Wurlitzer is in worse shape than you thought. There is also the risk that the Wurlitzer will require an advanced modification that you are unable to carry out. And there is a risk that you will hate the repetition and finickiness of the repair process and you won’t want to do it.
On the flip side, you may love doing the repairs, your Wurlitzer may be a dream to play, and you may find that all of the risks were remote and overstated. In fact, this will almost certainly be the case. (Note again the qualifier almost.)
We can tell you whether we would buy a particular Wurlitzer for sale, but we can’t walk you through everything that could possibly happen in the period between its purchase and that fuzzy future date in which all has been repaired and you have the best possible version of that Wurly in your possession.
The upside is that, if you are strategic, you can easily build an escape hatch into your project. The principle is very simple: buy a Wurlitzer that you can flip if the project goes sideways.
Mitigating risk by buying a Wurlitzer that you can resell
This section is not about keyboards. It's about finding the mental state that will allow you to happily buy the unrestored vintage keyboard whose condition you are unsure about. On the other hand, if you—for any reason—are not that worried about your ability to repair and enjoy a Wurlitzer, you should certainly buy whatever keyboard feels right to you.
But if you are risk-averse, the best cure is simply finding a low-risk keyboard.
Ideally, you will find a really excellent Wurlitzer that has been loved and cared for since it was purchased new by its original owner. Let's not think too hard about why the original owner doesn't want the Wurly anymore. Maybe he was whisked away into the clouds on an eagle, or retired to the recording studio where the keyboards no longer require earthly hands to tune them.
This type of keyboard exists, but it is very rare. And although its excellent original condition gives you a head start, it will still need some work if you want it to play perfectly. There are Wurlitzers that look pretty ugly on the outside, but have a similar history of rarely being played. For instance, we once bought a Wurly that was inexplicably covered in mud, but the inside looked as bright and shiny as the day it was made.
So, you don't necessarily need to be afraid of a Wurlitzer that has clearly exchanged hands a couple of times, been stored in suboptimal places, or just generally looks kinda kicked around. A lot of these keyboards are worth buying, and many can be restored to the same excellent condition that a one-owner keyboard is capable of. But some of them—not many, but some—are in such bad shape that they will fall short of perfect, no matter how much work you put into them. This is usually due to water damage, but we discuss that in a different article.
The way to tell the difference between an ugly Wurly and an unrepairable Wurly is by disassembling it and examining the wooden parts, particularly the key bed. This is difficult to do when you are buying a keyboard from an independent seller on a platform like Facebook Marketplace. It is impossible to do if you want to haggle the price down, because you can't really demand both fastidious customer service and 50% off the seller's asking price.
However, if the Wurlitzer is below market price, buying it is just inherently a lot less risky. If you decide you don't want it anymore, you can sell it and more or less get your money back. This is not advice to lie about facts you've discovered about the keyboard's condition, because even keyboards in really bad condition have a minimum market price. You will just be selling the keyboard to someone who has a different threshold for the DIY than you do.
So, really, there are three ways to mitigate risk:
Buy a fully restored keyboard from a trusted seller
Buy a keyboard that is obviously in excellent condition
Buy a keyboard in less-than-perfect condition for the cheapest price possible.
The more risk-averse you are, the cheaper your keyboard needs to be, and the harder you need to work to find one. This just means that you'll need to be really systematic about the keyboard hunt. You'll need to learn the market so you can recognize an inexpensive keyboard, and you'll need to act fast to snatch it up when you see it.
Here's the general strategy.
Let’s say that the market for a 200A in New York City bottoms out around $1800. In other words, if you have a 200A that is at least slightly more complete than a pile of loose hammers and that gross fiber-fill stuff that mice generate when they build nests, the minimum that you can sell it for is $1800. (This is a made-up number but it is probably fairly accurate.)
Let’s also say that there is a point where it becomes difficult to instantly sell a 200A in fair working condition. This isn’t the maximum price that you can get for a 200A. Instead, this is the maximum price at which your online listing starts a feeding frenzy. You could sell a 200A for more money—potentially much more—but you would have to sit on it for a few weeks and assure buyers of its good condition. Let’s say that your max feeding frenzy number is $2500.
If you live in New York—or can deliver the keyboard to New York—this price range represents your escape hatch. If you find something catastrophically wrong with the keyboard, you can resell it for $1800. If the keyboard is in normal bad condition and you just get sick of it, you can resell it for up to $2500.
I am using New York as an example because it is a market that I know very well, and it illustrates the point that these numbers depend on local conditions. You'll need to do enough research to determine what these numbers are for your local market.
Building the escape hatch—or, how to research Wurlitzer resale prices
How do you get these numbers? You must monitor the market and come to your own conclusions. Be realistic. You can’t be risk-averse about the keyboard and come up with over-optimistic pie-in-the-sky price data.
Also, you must keep track of each Wurlitzer model separately. In general, a 200A is worth the most, followed closely by a 200. (The differences are academic, but a lot of people feel much better having that "A" model.) Minor variants on a 200A, like a 206A that has been converted to 200A specs, track the 200A closely, but cabinet models like the 214 are more of a wild card. Wurlitzers in the 140 family are rare and desirable, and may or may not have the same pricing as a 200/200A. Wurlitzer 112, 120, 700 and 720 do not have the same resale potential as a 200A. But watch your local market and come to your own conclusions.
To effectively understand your local market, you must check all of the major resale websites multiple times per week. Make a note of new listings, their prices, and the quality and content of their photos. Can you determine any commonalities between listings that sell quickly, or listings that hang around for a while? Ephemeral listings are very important. If you check too infrequently, you’ll only see slow-moving keyboards. They may be more expensive or need more work, but they might simply suffer from bad photos. The keyboards that sell quickly are generally more competitive in pricing or condition.
Once you familiarize yourself with the local market, you can calibrate the amount of money you can realistically get back if you want to bail on the project. If you buy the keyboard for $5000, you’re probably going to be underwater if you decide that you want to get rid of it, no matter how minor your quibble with the keyboard. But if you can find a keyboard for $1200, even a failed repair project can potentially make you a modest profit.
So, you should not set your budget at the most expensive keyboard you can afford. Instead, your budget should leave you an escape hatch that you are comfortable with.
Engaging the escape hatch doesn’t mean that you’re not cut out for the task of buying and repairing a Wurlitzer. It just means that particular keyboard just didn’t work out for you. Feel free to find a new keyboard and try again. You’ll be wiser and more experienced, and you’ll be able to make a better judgment call about the amount of work that restoration entails.
Do I need an escape hatch?
No. This should not be understood as advice that encourages you to be cautious or risk-averse. If you see a keyboard at any price, and feel comfortable buying it, buy it. Instead, this advice reflects the fact that a Wurlitzer is expensive, and buying one for cash on Marketplace can sometimes feel like throwing money into a black hole. So, if you want to buy a Wurlitzer and you are nervous about doing so, researching the market and buying a Wurlitzer as cheaply as possible is one strategy for eliminating a little risk and uncertainty from the process.
If the Wurlitzer is offered at a mind-bogglingly low price, just buy it
First of all, there are a lot of scams out there. Obviously, if the Wurlitzer is offered at a low price because it is a scam, do not engage with the scammer. We will discuss how to identify a scam shortly.
But let's say that you have an opportunity to buy a Wurlitzer for a very low cost relative to market pricing, and you have good reasons to trust the seller. For instance, let's say that the seller is a friend of a friend.
Sometimes there is confusion on this point, because a mind-bogglingly low price for a Wurlitzer is, at the same time, an objectively decent sum of money. If you have Dave Ramsey in your ear, or your great-great grandfather who lived without running water and saved all of his money in a sock, then, yeah, I guess it's silly to buy a Wurlitzer at any price. So, if there is some question about whether you should buy a Wurlitzer at all, that is really a personal issue that we can't help with.
What we can tell you is that, if your goal is to buy a Wurlitzer, there are prices that represent an instant buy. This does not mean that you must buy the Wurlitzer at that price. You can instead choose to get yourself dinner at Nobu, or buy the 30-year Glenfiddich, or invest the money in a high-yield savings account. But if you choose to buy a Wurlitzer, you should be able to recognize your opportunity to do so when it happens. If you are familiar with the market, the moment will be obvious to you.
We are not going to share what that instant-buy number is, because it's always changing. But if your best friend's dad's dentist is offering you a Wurlitzer at a price which is half that of any other Wurlitzer on Facebook, eBay or Reverb, then—seriously—go pick it up.
How to spot a fake Wurlitzer listing
Sometimes, scammers use fake pictures to list a big-ticket item on Facebook Marketplace because they want to steal your money. They will generally choose a low price—sometimes a ridiculously low price, and sometimes a low price that seems fairly realistic compared to the other keyboards online. Scams are more likely to happen on Facebook Marketplace because Facebook doesn't mediate the transaction, while platforms like Reverb and eBay do.
You should not be afraid of scams, but obviously you don't want to fall for them. The biggest tell is that the seller wants you to send them money for the keyboard, sight unseen. This is different than placing a deposit with a professional who is using an actual credit card processor. Never send a Facebook Marketplace seller cash without seeing the keyboard in person.
Often, a scammer will have some sort of story about why they need a deposit: too many people are asking about it, or they need to verify that you are a serious buyer, etc. In fact there is no reason why you need to send a Marketplace seller any money, unless you are standing next to the keyboard and about to load it into your car. Even if there is a minute risk that the keyboard is real, it's not worth it.
Usually, a scammer has stolen photos from another listing, or they have cobbled together photos from multiple listings. If the pictures seem questionable, feel free to ask for more photos. Even if you suspect that the seller is a scammer, you can still message them and ask for more information. Obviously, don't message them anything sensitive, like all of the PINs to your debit cards. But they're not going to bite you if you just say, "Hi, I'm interested in the keyboard, can you send me more photos?" Ask for a specific photo—like a closeup of a dent or some angle of the lid that isn't pictured. If they can provide it, then the keyboard is probably real. If they tell you that they need $200 to take a picture because it's in their brother's storage unit, abort.
Not every awkward seller is a scammer. If you assume so, you'll miss out on some really inexpensive keyboards. Here are some examples of weird experiences that one might have with completely real, perfectly nice people:
All of the photos are extremely blurry and seemed to be composed by someone whose only aesthetic frame of reference is gas station surveillance footage. They send more photos when requested, although the new photos have the same compositional issues as all the other ones. This doesn't mean that the keyboard isn’t real. It does mean that the seller is bad at taking photos. (Note that, although receiving additional photos is generally a good sign, it is not not, in itself, proof that a keyboard listing is genuine. You still must consider the entire context of the listing and your communication with the seller. Do not send the seller money for a “deposit” just because they were able to come up with extra photos.)
The seller's replies are terse, and 80% of their vocabulary is just the thumbs-up emoji. This is really common if the seller is an older person who doesn't text much. If you're not comfortable with the seller's messaging style, you can ask to call them on the phone. Just make sure to signal that you are a serious buyer before you make this request. A lot of sellers are also nervous about meeting up, and want to make sure that you are also operating in good faith.
The seller includes a really unhelpful video. For instance, maybe it's 6 seconds long and shows them pecking out a couple of random notes with one finger. Although it may look like a hostage video, this is actually a good indication that the seller has the piano and wants to assure buyers that it turns on and plays, even if they're not 100% sure how to use it. They are probably just unaware that their video is off-putting because they don't watch as much B horror as you do.
If you are not comfortable with a transaction, listen to your gut and stop engaging with the seller. There are other keyboards out there. It is okay to cancel a transaction on Marketplace or the other online platforms for any reason.
If you see a listing and would like our opinion about whether the keyboard is worth buying, get in touch with us at the Wurly Hotline.