Originally Posted by
DrewWalden
... If you all where in my shoes what would you do. ...
I'm no expert, but...
I would send that thing back so fast it'd be a blur (following all the proper procedures, of course).
Seller must have a magic camera to make that thing look as good as it did on the eBay pics. No way would I accept that.
But hurry. It says on the original eBay page under the "Returns" tab:
"Items will be accepted for return if the item has been misrepresented in the actual auction listing and the item is returned in its original condition as it was shipped from the seller. Seller must be notified within 3 days of receipt of merchandise."
I would say "misrepresented" definitely, the eBay pictures barely resemble the actual instrument as portrayed in the OP pics. Yikes!
Seller also failed to portray (or maybe seller has really bad vision and didn't notice) the weird issues on the back of the neck below the peghead, as shown in OP pic "mandolin4.jpg" at Dropbox site. That's considerably worse than just "rubs, streaky, etc" that the seller mentioned, unless "etc" means 'looks like it was ate away by acid' or something.
Note that I'm not necessarily accusing the seller of *intentional* deceit, maybe their camera just somehow gets beauty shots where everyone else's camera shows the raw details. I do know several people (*not* sellers on eBay) who, before they got their cataracts fixed, their eyesight was so bad that they didn't realize when something was a disaster - I've seen that in retired hobbyist car painters, they didn't know their quality of work had declined until someone got good zoomed-in photos of it, then they were like, "Whoa, that's terrible, I didn't know it looked like that."
But back to the mandolin, whatever the reason, the seller's pictures make the instrument look way better than it is.
If I'm reading the eBay pages correctly, looks like it's already sold twice now, it sold once on July 10 for $49.95, and sold again on July 17 for $900? So does that mean that the earlier person who bought it for $49.95 *also* returned it, or that they just didn't bother to send payment? (I don't know how to interpret eBay stuff.)
But, on the other hand, who is the builder "Fredrick Snyder", is he world-reknowned like Lloyd Loar or something? If so, that could change things. The eBay page gave a link to Snyder's obit which said his "main hobby and joy was building and repairing musical instruments." I'll bet Mr. Snyder would have a fit if he could see the condition that his instrument is in now.
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