What's it worth?

[Rody]

What is a Baldwin C=400 worth.Excellent condition.

[jbird604]

I hope someone who's bought one recently can chime in. I bought one from a church a few years ago for $1500 and paid another $500 to get it shipped to me. That was probably more than most people are used to paying for one that old and relatively undesirable as a brand, but I was sort of making a donation to the church because I wanted to.

I did turn around and re-sell it a year later for three times that much, but that was selling it out of my shop with delivery and setup included, along with a warranty. I doubt that any shop would be getting that much money for one these days though, given the depressed market and given that the C-400 technology is getting pretty old, with far superior organs becoming quite readily available for not much money.

You might be lucky and get $1000 for it, provided it is in perfect working order and looks good. That is just a guess though. Someone here who has actually bought or sold one lately will have a better idea.

[Rody]

Thanks jbird That's pretty depressing!

[jbird604]

Wish I could be more encouraging. Of course the selling price of any used item just depends on what the seller and buyer can agree upon. In some markets, used organs are going for a lot more than they do down here, where so many churches are putting them up for sale (or to give away).

I hope someone else will chime in, because my experience may not be typical at all. And yours could be nicer and even newer than the one that I bought and sold.

[Rody]

Thanks John. I believe I paid @13k when I bought it in the mid 90's.

[jbird604]

Yes, it may seem sad to think that a $13K instrument has depreciated to nearly nothing, but that's just about how it goes. Twenty-five years is actually a good long life for an organ that wasn't a "premium" brand to begin with. We service Allen and Rodgers organs that are 35 or 40 or even 50 years old sometimes, and they may still be in nearly perfect working order and still have at least some market value. But no other brands hold their value like that. A Baldwin organ is at least a step above some brands that are considered disposable, but one as old as yours could well be worth no more than 10% of the original price, if that much.

This is partly because the technology changes rapidly, so people are willing to pay less and less for an item as it ages because newer stuff is just flashier in some ways. But it also has to do with life expectancy, and we know that electronic devices deteriorate in measurable ways as they age.

But one thing that hurts you so much is that Baldwin no longer exists as an organ brand. In fact, even when you bought yours it was just a "name" that was being stuck onto imported Italian organs made by Viscount or Galanti. The "Church Organ Systems" organization that tried to keep the Baldwin and Wurlitzer names alive for another decade or so eventually went by the wayside, and now there is virtually no technical support, no parts source, so getting one repaired is all but impossible these days, for anything but the most mundane problems, such as burned out lamps.

All those things, combined with the extremely depressed market for organs these days, make it hard to re-sell any used church organ today.