Arguably one of the most divisive things in the online saxophone community over the past 20 years has become the name Selmer—and specifically how it relates to vintage Selmer Paris models such as the BA, SBA, and Mark VI.
After two decades+ of reading the commentary/opinions of those who participate in online discussion boards like SOTW, it strikes me that those with the most vehement opinions are those who: 1. Don’t own a Selmer Paris horn, and never have, and/or 2. Are priced out of the BA, SBA, and Mark VI market.
I’m not sure if these comments and opinions are simply sour grapes, consequently some have convinced themselves that the horns are not worth X. As a result these players have taken it upon themselves to try and convince everyone else this as well.
Whatever the reason, there are those players who can’t help but make statements about vintage Selmer Paris horn prices. Statements such as: “not worth it”, “overpriced”, “price is ridiculous”, and “price is absurd”. Or my personal favorite: “I could buy 2 of brand X, and still have $$ left over [for what that {insert model and specifics of vintage Selmer here} costs]”.
Saxophone players have it pretty good compared compared to other instrumentalists
I have said it before, and I’ll say it again: True professional model saxophones are no more expensive than other professional instruments. As a matter of fact, as sax players, we are WAY BETTER OFF than our musical colleagues who play other woodwinds such as the flute or bassoon. Why? Because are our instruments are considerably less expensive than their pro model horns are.
Don’t believe me? Check out the used bassoons currently listed by Midwest Musical Imports. At the time of writing their used professional model bassoons start at $17,510, and top out at $30,000. Don’t forget the bocal upgrades that many a bassoon player have to make. Even used ones will commonly set you back +/- around $1,000.
OK, so bassoons are made of wood and are much more complicated mechanically than saxophones. Then how about flutes? Flutes are similar to saxophones, only smaller. Right?
One of the world’s most respected names in flutes is Powell. Flute World is a Powell dealer, and on their website you can find the brand’s professional model flutes listed. New Artist model Powell flutes range from $15,759 to $66,560: before options.
So why is it that Powell has been able to make flutes in the US since 1927, yet the Silver Eagle saxophone was a flop? Are there simply not enough sax players willing to pay out some serious coin for a saxophone?
Players bitch about the prices of new Selmers and other brands not manufactured in Taiwan and China. Yet compared to the Powell Flutes, even the Series III baritone is a bargain.
Kessler and Sons is a Selmer Pro Shop—meaning that any horn you get from them WILL be set up and playing like a dream—and here are their current*, advertised prices for new, Selmer Paris horns.
*Prices are in $ US, and current as of September, 27, 2021
| Model | Soprano | Alto | Tenor | Bari |
| Series II Jubilee gold lacquer | 5909.00 | 5879.00 | 7099.00 | |
| Series II gold lacquer | 12,919.00 | |||
| Series II brushed matte | 7039.00 | 14,949.00 | ||
| Series II black lacquer | 6939.00 | 7119.00 | 8429.00 | 15,179.00 |
| Supreme dark gold lacquer | 7609.00 | |||
| Series II silver plate | 6979.00 | 7639.00 | 9059.00 | 14,789.00 |
| Supreme solid silver lacquer keys | 19,389.00 | |||
| Supreme black lacquer | 8149.00 | |||
| Supreme gold plated | 20,649.00 | |||
| Series III Jubilee gold lacquer | 6759.00** | 7629.00 | ||
| Series III gold lacquer | 6689.00 | 14,159.00 | ||
| Series III black lacquer | 7919.00 | 8229.00** | 9329.00 | 16,529.00 |
| Series III brushed matte | 7809.00 | 16,789.00 | ||
| Series III silver plate | 7919.00 | |||
| Series III solid silver | 11,499.00 | 20,009.00** | ||
| Series III gold plate | 16,649.00 | |||
| Reference 54 gold lacquer | 8879.00 | |||
| Reference 54 vintage matte | 8879.00 | |||
| Reference 36 gold lacquer | 8879.00 | |||
| Reference 36 vintage matte | 8879.00 |
** Indicates discontinued models
Even if we look at the most expensive Selmer offered on this list—The Supreme gold plated alto for $20,649.00—it is still less than 1/3 of the price of Powell’s most expensive pro flute (before the player adds any extra options).
Feeling less sorry for yourself as a sax player yet?
It could be worse, you could play strings
If you’re still not convinced, let’s take a look at violins. If as a sax player you’re complaining about the cost of a pro horn, how would you feel about about shelling out tens, or hundreds of thousands of $$ for your instrument?
I was looking around the Net and came across Martin Swan Violins. They have an amazing assortment of antique violins for the professional player. They have them in the £20K – £50K range, as well as violins in the £50K+ range.
Of course if you play violin, you have to have a bow to draw across it. Martin Swan Violins also offers a fantastic assortment of bows that range in price from under £5K, to over £20K
Yup, bows for violins can cost more than we pay for the most expensive saxophone from Selmer. Let’s just let that sink in for a moment…
And that’s just for violins. God help you if you play cello or double bass. Hope you have a trust fund or investments you can leverage. Suddenly bass and contrabass saxophones do not look so expensive anymore.
As players we are our own worst enemies
I’ve said it here and in online communities before: Saxophone players are a cheap bunch. Why? I don’t know. But we have contributed to the demise of once vibrant and successful companies. How? Because we are the ones always looking to pay the least amount possible.
Saxophones from the great companies of the past—Keilwerth, Selmer, King, Conn, Martin, Buescher, et al—were built to last generations when maintained properly. The problem is we now live in a disposable world.
Don’t like your couch anymore? Don’t recover it, throw it out and buy a new one. Large home appliance last how long these days? Certainly not the decades the old ones from the 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and even 80s did.
And tech? How many computers, tablets, cell phones and the likes have you personally burned through over the past two decades? Now multiple that times the number of people in the developed world. That’s a lot of waste in our land fills, and a lot of valuable materials that have been mined for the various components like microchips.
Sadly, musical instruments of all stripes seem to have fallen victim to this same type of disposable thinking. When you only pay $1,500 – $3,000 today for a new, pro model horn (sure it is), what are the chances you are going to pay a tech $1,000 to overhaul it for you?
Jury is still out how many of the new horns made today will be around a few generations from now. From what I’m seeing brought into the shop, the student horns of yesteryear were built far better than the crap that’s being produced today by many companies.
And what about those supposed pro horns by companies that have had them stenciled in factories in China and Taiwan? Again, time will tell. Will they hold up as well as the stencils made by say Keilwerth, Conn, King, Martin, or Buffet? I guess we’ll find out in the next 20-40+ years.
And this relates to the prices of vintage Selmers how?
Which brings us a full 360° back to Selmer Paris. Although not nearly as upper class as the violin crowd, certain Selmer saxophones have developed a strong following that has increased over time. In turn their prices have not been subject to market fluctuations as much as other vintage saxophones. Is this a contributing factor to some players’ attitudes about vintage Selmer prices?
The following chart represents a survey I did over the past weekend that represents some completed sales on eBay, as well as current dealer offerings of some vintage Selmer saxophones. Yes, there are a lot of vintage Selmers for sale right now.
To keep things fairly manageable, I focused only on the BA, SBA, and Mark VI. I did find sopranino through bass examples, but not necessarily of every model.
You can use the search feature at the top of the chart to find specifics you are interested in.
A couple of points to keep in mind:
- The horns found through vintage dealers are in generally much better condition than those seen by private sellers on eBay. That is a major contributing factor to the price difference between private eBay sales prices, and dealer prices.
- If you have BA, SBA, or Mark VI at home, don’t think that if you’re going to sell it, you are going to get what a dealer is selling a similar # horn for. Dealers have put time and $$ into all the horns they have for sale. Just the photos alone cost a lot of $$: either in time, or in the hiring of a professional studio photographer. Then there is the shop time to bring it into proper condition for sale. Because no matter how good you think your sax is, it will undoubtedly need work, and an established vintage sax dealer with a sound reputation needs to ensure that everything they sell is in top condition—or sold “as is”.
- Yes, serial #’s make a huge difference.
- Refinishing does cause the value of a Selmer horn to decrease. However, old, well-done relacquering or replating, done in the Selmer factory with the engraving re-cut, does not decrease the value nearly as much as a crap job by someone too friendly with a buffing wheel.
- In addition to the BA, SBA, and Mark VI, other models, such as the Dorsey model, or horns with special finishes, are also fetching a lot of $$—depending on their condition of course.
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I will leave it to you to look through the various data points and find what’s interesting to you. I am not interested in the horn prices per se, rather how they compare to professional instruments that other musicians would have to buy.
Disregarding Roberto Winds’ $75,000 5-digit Mark VI tenor that once belonged to Bob Berg—which seems to me is really being used as an advertising gimmick, more so than an actual sales item—the most expensive vintage Selmer is the nearly totally original Mark VI bass #331XXX, currently on eBay. Bids are to start at €18,500. According to xe.com, today’s price would be $21,613.25 US.
The second most expensive horn is USA Horn’s Mark VI gold plated alto #1997XX, for $19,500 US.
Keeping in mind the professional bassoons, flutes, and strings that our musical colleagues have to buy if they are looking for the same level of instruments, how is the pricing of vintage Selmers out of line? Please someone, enlighten me.
Not all vintage Selmers are equal
I am in no way saying that every single Mark VI, BA, or SBA is worth X. That would be folly.
The problem is the Internet has made everyone as expert. Everyone with access to Google looks up pictures of a make and model of a particular saxophone and presto, they think that a saxophone in their possession is suddenly rare, valuable, or even desirable. Further complicating matters are those who learn how to fix things by watching YouTube videos, suddenly thinking they know how to do overhauls on their own.
And therein lays a huge problem in this Selmer debate. To paraphrase my colleague Matt Stohrer: When you are playing a vintage sax, you are not playing it like it came from the factory. Rather, you are playing the work of the last tech who overhauled it.
Many horns out there have been overhauled by less than competent techs. Other players neglect their horns altogether. Some vintage horns have never had an overhaul in their lives. For other horns, it has been decades since they’ve been in the shop—let alone had an overhaul.
Add all these variables into the equation, and it’s no wonder that there is so much variety in the vintage Selmers out there.
Here are a couple of other variables that can affect the way any vintage horn plays:
- Some horns have been played A LOT.
- These were mostly handmade instruments, so variations among them is quite common.
- The company made design changes over a model’s production run.
Putting both sets of these variables together, you have a virtual cornucopia of variations possible that can explain why horn X plays differently than horn Y of the same model of only a few serial #s difference.
Bottom line
In the end, you have to play a horn and determine for yourself if a particular Selmer X is right for you. If you don’t have the coin, don’t bitch about it. It’s not the horn’s or the market’s fault you are short of cash.
If you really want want a particular vintage model, see about being creative in how you can raise the cash. Or conversely, buy a modern Selmer, or horn from a different pro horn maker like JK, Yani, or Yamaha. Then at least you are getting a horn made by an established manufacturer of professional instruments. Used modern versions of current production horns by all these manufacturers are often available for less than you would pay for something new marked “pro horn” of unknown pedigree.
Whatever you do, I always advise players to buy from a reputed store that stands behind their products. That together with doing your homework ahead of time, are two ways to avoid falling victim to counterfeits. This statement applies to both new and used, modern and vintage, pro model saxophones of ALL brands.
Today my computer counted around 140000 video’s on the subject of cheap vs expensive saxophones. When I compare that to the few silver eagles sold it suggests that saxophone players are really in the bargain basement of the music world.
Absolutely Theo. Bargain basement for use. Maybe even lower. Freaking sad lot we are.
An instrument I didn’t mention is clarinets. Professional wooden clarinet players pay more than we do for our horns, and often replace their instruments every few years. Why? I am not sure. It is just something I am anecdotally hearing via the musician’s grapevine.
Our lead symphony players, university profs, and others who spend hours a day playing their wooden instruments, are likely to replace their horns in <10 years. It would be interesting to find out how widespread this is. Perhaps only the top players are doing this, since they are more likely to be company X artists. Or is it due to changes in the wood itself, that makes the clarinet sound, tune, or play differently?
“Professional wooden clarinet players pay more than we do for our horns, and often replace their instruments every few years. Why?”
Wood and reeds consists of the same materials. Around 20-25% is a biological glue called lignin. Lignin is soluble in luke warm water (condens, never call it spit) and it slowly disapears from the reed and from the clarinet. Without lignine a reed sounds very dry. You can try that by keeping it in warm water for a few hours. When a clarinet loses too much lignine (after years) the wood becomes less elastic. It will certainly change how the instrument feels, The influence on the sound is probably minor.
I guess that the combination of a change in how the instrument feels and the perception of a higher risk in cracks and in a mechanical malfunction, can affect the replacement time for their black stick of the devil. How they deal with such uncertainty is of course highly subjective.
I object to your characterization of vintage Selmers that are on eBay as not being of the same quality as ‘reputable dealers’. That can be true, but there are reputable dealers, namely myself, who have made a business decision to use the internet as our primary sales channel and eBay is a huge part of that strategy. Every horn we sell on eBay, though, has been through our shop, is ready to play, and has an unconditional return policy. I think it would have been better to note that NOT ALL Selmers you find on eBay are sold by reputable dealers, but there are at least a few of us here.
Absolutely Matt. Point taken.
I know everything you sell is top notch. You are a shining beacon in the eBay sea of a lot of crap, and lately, these days more than ever before, misrepresentation and counterfeit. I know that if I bought Selmer, Yani, or anything else from your shop, it would be the genuine article, and it would play.
My apologies for the way in which my article was worded. I was indeed thinking more of brick and mortar stores.
Thank you so much for the kind words 🙂 And no harm done 🙂
Tweaked the wording a bit Matt to clarify things. You were totally correct, and I stand corrected.
PS: Still like your alto rothophone. Wish it were a tenor or bari. 😉
Thanks for this article, certainly something to think about. I wonder if sax players are tight because most of us (if not all?) Double up on something, even if it’s another sax, or all of them plus a few other woodwind instruments!
Added to that, the perception of value does tend to be relative, so we can only really compare our costs with those of the other musicians that we work with. I’m mainly into rock n roll and my instrument costs far outstrip those of my band mates for example.
It’s funny, b/c I played with a guitar player who used a Gibson “Gold Top”. It cost waaaaaay more than any of my saxes.
Really good kits costs more than saxophones. The drummer I worked with in the blues band bought a new D.W. kit that was enormous, and had every kind of drum, cymbal, and doodad you could think of. The cost? Again, way more than my saxophones.
Those 2 exceptions aside, I don’t know what the prices of truly pro keys, synths, guitars, drums, bass guitars, etc are. I do know that for those musicians, the choices are far more plentiful than what saxophone players have.
Excellent article. Thanks for putting this together. I have a SA80ii that I bought used in mint condition. It was either that or a YAS-62iii. I got the Yamaha first, and it had issues (bought from online retailer). For almost the same price, I got my Selmer from the tech I brought the new Yamaha to because of it’s playability issues. Initially I was unhappy because I had always played Yamahas. But I grew into it, and wouldn’t part with it for anything. It’s not a Mark VI. So what? It’s become MY voice and I didn’t break the bank to buy it.
Hey there Woody. Welcome to The Bassic Sax Blog. 🙂
I think that there are some smoking hot Selmer horns that aren’t BA, SBA, or Mark VIs. My VIs have all been with me for decades, but if something were to happen to them, I don’t know what I would do. I know I wouldn’t necessarily replace them with VIs again.
I have played some amazing Mark VII tenors. I absolutely love the horns. I was actually going to buy my friend’s tenor about 10 years ago, but stuff happened. She became ill, and her husband was a real jerk. Don’t know what happened with the horn. I suspect he sold it like he sold off all the rest of her music stuff. She had a basement full of rare Hammonds. The Mark VII was almost worthless compared to the rest of musical collection. (She was a keyboard player/teacher who dabbled in saxophone.)
That trip down memory lane aside, my all-time favorite Selmer that I didn’t own, belongs to my friend Jim. It is a Reference 36 tenor that he got from Kessler & Sons. It plays, feels, and sounds just like my VI. I have talked to Dave Kessler about the horns he sells, and understand what they do with the new Selmers that come in. (They are only 1 of a couple of Selmer Pro Shops in the US.) I know if I ever had to replace any of my horns, Dave would be my first phone call.
Thank you Helen for the welcome. You mention Kessler & Sons. When I bought my used (and mis-used) SA80ii Tenor, I knew that it would need work. I bought it with the intention of having it overhauled by Kessler & Sons. It is because of them being one of the few Selmer Pro Shops that I went to them, and also because of Dave’s description of the work they’d be doing. The horn I got back was as good as new as far as mechanics and playability. I, too, would go to Dave before anyone else were I to buy a new horn.
In defense of the saxophone players: Selmer, Conn and Armstrong lost the student saxophone market to Yamaha. But it was not only price related, the set up of the Yamaha student saxophone was just better.
While that might be true in the student world, it doesn’t really explain the attitudes of buyers looking to purchase pro level saxophones.
I get what you are saying Theo. A lot about the Yamaha student model horns was better for years. However, since Yamaha switched their production for their student horns away from Japan, and Selmer student horns have stepped up their game over the past few years, I don’t find the differences all that drastic.
I am continually impressed with the new Selmer student altos and tenors we get in the shop. Why? More than 90% play straight out of the box with 0 adjustment needed before they go out on for a school year rental.
The shop where I work is a Selmer dealer. On any given year we get about 10-15 new Selmer student model saxophones to top up our rental stock. Over the past 5 or so years, the Selmer products have improved a lot.
Around 2015 I also noticed improvements with the Selmer student range. The present Selmer company has made some good choices. Still there is a generation of saxophone players who’s left pinkie can’t find the G# on a 6M.
Recently I looked for Conn and Keilwerth influences in an 1988 Armstrong saxophone. With a good set up it could have been a better saxophone than the Yamaha, but marketing choices made the look more important than the performance. In the end this difference in marketing approach has influenced the choices of a whole generation.
A good set up is both expensive and valuable so it is a good choice to learn new sax players the difference between a good set up and a wall decoration on a rental.
Good stuff!
My SBA tenor (a good relac) cost me 3k, SBA alto (really worn-almost no lacquer) 1.5k and a early 21xxx BA near mint alto was also 1.2k!
They all have their place – along with a 161xxx conn burnished gold sop that outplays any selmer (and I have a few Selmers)
So. they are really a deal vs. that Schreiber contra bassoon that I sold for $25k
Getting into Haynes or Powell flutes- or Stradivarius violins…nuts!
I only have one relacquered/refinished horn. It is my UGLY Mark VI bari—talk about someone getting too friendly with a buffing wheel. The low Eb tonehole is barely there. Yikes!
That said, its tone kicks ass! I bought it for its sound. I played others, and choose this ugly duckling with its hideous relacquer over pristine examples b/c of its tone. It does classical bari, sweet ballads, electric blues/rock, and every form of jazz equally well. Loves every MP you put on it. As my sax teacher from NY once said: It has that quintessential bari sound, don’t ever change its set-up. It has THE sound jazz players are looking for. Go figure…
Funny thing, when I bought it, it wasn’t a whole lot cheaper (only 1K) less than original lacquer models. Why? I’m guessing that when the guys in the shop played it, they realized that this bad boy from 1967 sounded like a killer VI—regardless of what it looked like.