So you can call a home style dealer or a small store and buy a new Chronosonix or other items at half off if the dealer is starving for money. I now do see a business for this where you call every shop in the US and start buying and selling these products as a business.
It’s not that simple. If he were going to discount and ship, he would be in serious violation of his agreement with Wilson and they would cut him off. If he were already going out of business, it wouldn’t matter to him. But if he hoped to get other product in the future, he’d be shooting himself in the foot.
What is more common is that guys cruise Audiogon, Reverb, eBay etc and make “low ball offers.” If something retails for $10k, often sells used for less than $5k, and a hobbiest is offering it for $5k, a “low baller” might offer him $2.5k with the hope he just needs some quick cash and is anxious to sell.
How many ads have you seen where the lister says “low ball offers will be ignored?”
The other thing that I see is that dealers will low ball on a trade, (or maybe just build the trade higher and the real discount lower). The the dealer funnels the trade over to a third party lister who puts it on eBay or Audiogon for a fee.
Capitalism promotes creativity. Nevertheless I think a guy who calls dealer after dealer asking for their unwanted inventory would soon be considered a pariah.
Ren Ferguson, former head luthier at Gibson’s Bozeman operations, said that there were guys who called every dealer asking for a particular model because they were legitimately trying to find one that was just not available. So lots of orders would come in for some model because some of the dealers would take the call seriously and decide to have one for stock. Maybe one guy calling 30 dealers would precipitate six orders for the model.
