$200 for a bunch of Neumanns & more, apparently.

[James Chia]

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150158610590028&set=a.382185025027.162123.78352690027&type=1&ref=nf

[Chinagraf]

A) BS
or
b) Stolen

[Hud]

Lol
Thats nuthin, you should see the size of the fish he caught that morning

[Chris H]

.........well i'm not going to be wailing and gnashing the teeth at Tom's "apparent "good luck. I used to dream of this sort of thing happening and nearly lucked on to a super bargain once or twice BUT you don't need it to make or record great music.......and in the end is just a plain waste of good old envy.
...........wouldn't knock that sort of a bargain back myself though!

[GlennS]

I've had the odd bargain purchase in my time, nothing like that of course. I used to dream of such a bargain find, but then I thought about how honest it would be to know the true value & continue to play dumb. Not really something to brag about IMO. Unless it's a liquidator's auction or something I guess.

[headman]

I just get a really bad vibe when I look at that Facebook page and it's not gear or rockstar envy. Call me a tired old man, but I just don't get any of that scene.

headman

[DarkSky]

Love the comments on fb.

Especially the one from Paul M Sammes:

Good to see Tom was happy to pay a fair price, and not exploit the situation. That's the Tom I know.

That about sums it up...

[geareyes]

Is this a genuine story? Casino market? Where?

Mike

[waitup]

http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&sa ... CB4Q8gEwAA

[Ben M]

I find it too hard to believe quite frankly that the seller didn't have a clue to how much these mics were worth. These days we have the internet to easily check prices of models etc....
Otherwise they are stolen and sold to him by some junkie off the back of a truck. In which case we should be asking for serial no's.

He is one of the greatest BS's in the industry. I'd expect this story to be nothing short of BS.
He probably meant $200 thousand. Which is probably about the same in Tom's language and bank account.

I simply would not believe any of this story.

[Ben M]

60 -70K of mics for $200. Pull the other one.

Anyone missing a mic or 3?

[DarkSky]

...Otherwise they are stolen and sold to him by some junkie off the back of a truck. In which case we should be asking for serial no's...

Thats the first thought that comes to mind for most of us.

You'd have to assume that 301 have done their homework before making it public in the way they have. If not, there could be some very red faces in a day or two when 'Constable Joe' comes knocking.

[obutcher]

Ridiculous! Surely someone knows a bit more info than what they're bragging about on the photo caption.

[rick]

I wouldnt worry too much about this
every thing has a back story - the one here is 301 have not had a great vintage mic collection for at least 20 years
and looks like tom just happened to find the exact things they needed ... and for $200 ....wow that was lucky

i wonder if he was lucky enough to get the 7 grand worth of power supplies and cables as well for his two hundred clams..?


these mics are not missing locally

and the m49 and at least two of the u47 were not delivered to australia and sold by simon grey to an australian customer back in the 1960s so dont panic they have not been sitting in a cupboard locally unloved for years waiting for tom to get lucky

the good news for me is 301 can use their own mics for their sessions next time snoop doggy dog comes to town
....instead of using mine

[Linear]

i guess you could say good on him for being lucky.

the thing that annoys me is that the person who owned these mics should have had the good fortune, not someone who could afford to buy these at market prices and not bat an eyelid.

i'm sure a couple of hundred grand to that person would have made their life (or their kids lives) inextricably better. these sort of bargains are becoming rarer thanks to the internet but it just means that it's the people who don't use the internet that are the ones getting fleeced (ie probably some little old lady).

i guess some people thrive on a 'win' like that - but i'd rather not have the other persons loss on my conscience.

Chris

[rick]

let me park my unicorn while we presume its a true story

personally my feeling is you have to pay a price that is enough to make the seller feel good about the sale and to keep you able to show your face in public again - thats all
if you find something worth a mint and you get it cheap try factoring all the hours in your life you have spent researching this stuff so you know the whats the whys and the how much

i have bought a 47 for a thousand dollars the seller was really happy and would have been as just as happy for $200
except when he found out what it was worth ( 3- 4 k at the time ) so untested unloved $1000 was about right
i reckon just offering $200 would have been carving thats not my style wether buying or selling

i have bought a neve console for $1000
i have bought lots of things for $1000 ( the neumannlathe deal will all that came with it comes to mind )

i reckon $1000 is more then a weeks wage and more then a months saving for most people that might have old valuable audio junk

so thats where i start for those kinds of deals

$200 is less then the petrol price for toms bentley to get him back to byron from casino
its also what i would call carving

however i am sure everytime this particular tale of microphones gets told the dollar figure will change and the unicorns will start calling out for dinner .

it is good to see 301 with an enviable mic collection though
it never made sense to me that he had not attended to it
now he has .. at whatever price he paid it was probably well worth doing

[tweakeasy]

Although I more than agree that this deal is BS part of what's been said here doesn't quite gel with me - it's been inferred that everybody should pay a different price based on what they have. Theoretically that's a nice idea but completely unworkable. It's been said that as this guy has $$$ to spend if he came across that bargain he should come clean with the seller and let them know what it's worth, but if someone like me with with next to no $$$ came across the same bargain it would be okay for me to keep quiet and let the seller "lose" potential extra money for his family?

And so if those who have a bit of dosh win an item on eBay at auction and it's a bargain, should they contact the seller and offer to pay them more than the sale price to "be fair"?

We'd all prefer for it to be a seller's market when we're selling, a buyer's market when we're buying, but at the end of the day it's up to the seller to come up with their price, and not for the buyer to bargain the price up...

[Linear]

Although I more than agree that this deal is BS part of what's been said here doesn't quite gel with me - it's been inferred that everybody should pay a different price based on what they have. Theoretically that's a nice idea but completely unworkable. It's been said that as this guy has $$$ to spend if he came across that bargain he should come clean with the seller and let them know what it's worth, but if someone like me with with next to no $$$ came across the same bargain it would be okay for me to keep quiet and let the seller "lose" potential extra money for his family?

I'm not saying that there should be a sliding scale, like income tax, on what people pay for things.

Put it this way - how would you feel if it were your grandparents that were sitting on $150,000 worth of microphones and someone came and knowingly bought the lot for $200? who bought the microphones and how much money they had or didn't have has nothing to it from their perspective.

At the end of the day, if it were true it was a legal transaction. It's more a question of whether or not you could live with yourself knowing that if the seller was a little more informed, they could retire 5 years earlier (or buy that marlin boat they always wanted...)?

Chris

[rick]

$150,000 ?
you looking at the same picture as me chris or is there more ?
i count a conservative $60,000 retail
from a guy who just made 260 million bucks selling sae
i reckon he paid a fraction more then a mere $200
i wonder if he paid gst ?

i know of a similar cache
its going to be $25,000 wholesale and its a very difficult road to walk down
much further then byron to casino
anybody want to go to the flea markets in bombay..?

[Ausrock]

Disregard the legitimacy of this story.................what comes into play is the ethics and/or morality involved in a situation like this.

For example..............Let's say you work within the retail area of the music business and you take a phone call from a little old lady who is looking for advice on selling her late husband's instruments. From the conversation you know that the kind of $$ she is thinking of is ridiculously low for what she has, yet you offer, (with your now inside information) to go and look over the instruments and proceed to buy them at the bargain basement price................so the question is, a) did you do the "right" thing, or b) did you not?

[tweakeasy]

Detailed hypotheticals aside - you know I wouldn't be surprised if stating publicly that they got the mics for that price was simply a publicity stunt - look how it's getting people talking about 301. "Bad publicity is still publicity" as they say and they probably figured that most people would work out they were pulling our legs anyway and hadn't actually "swindled" a poor old man in need of a Marlin boat at the markets...

You don't get to 260 mill and change without being a bit shrewd, business savvy and (perhaps) taking advantage of a few honest people along the way.

Bet they have a right old laugh if they come across this thread!

[Ben M]

i know of a similar cache
its going to be $25,000 wholesale and its a very difficult road to walk down
much further then byron to casino
anybody want to go to the flea markets in bombay..?

Oh goodgolly mister rick, dat is a long road to walk down.
I will go if you lend me your unicorn.

[mylesgm]

I'd love to go to the flea markets in bombay but I'd be doing that in person not over the phone or the internet...

[Ben M]

I'd love to go to the flea markets in bombay but I'd be doing that in person not over the phone or the internet...

Myles if there's room on the back of the unicorn your welcome to ride with me.

My magic carpet is in the shop for repairs so that's not an option unfortunately.

[mylesgm]

We're in the music business... I use my magic carpet everyday!

[ChrisW]

Do you think people living in Casino who don't know the value of a nice microphone store those '$200' mics for years in climatically controlled, moisture free, dust free environments?

[Ben M]

Do you think people living in Casino who don't know the value of a nice microphone store those '$200' mics for years in climatically controlled, moisture free, dust free environments?

Forgive me for correcting you Chris but there are 10 mics in the pic making them on average '$20' mics.
I've known Casino to be the beef capital of Australia with plenty of moisture and dust kickin around up there... but apparently it's the Neumann capital of Australia these days.

[DarkSky]

...It's even getting hard to get a bargain at Cashies as anyone can now find what something is worth online.

Not quite anyone, so it would seem...

[rick]

Just organising the flights to india now
how many are walking and how many going by
unicorn?

[mylesgm]

Sounds like a great holiday...Turtlerock barbecue in India?