costaricadave
Well-known member
Keep making them Chuck! Maybe time for a price increase! Hope all is well! Hope to see you in the winter maybe.
Chuck, my friend, I am in tune with this "ukulele market" daily, it's my life. I will risk crossing a line in publicly sharing my evaluation so I apologize if it's not my place but here goes. Raise your prices! Not because you CAN , but because of the value you now offer. This is not an opinion. Your lifetime as a striving artist has brought you to a level that deserves more. It's not hype. I know what's being done in this market and the value of your present quality. I apologize if I should not say this on a public forum but I feel qualified to make these statements and secure in my appreciation.
When Chuck raises his prices then more of his customers will be collectors (who will be able to afford them) and won't play his holy grail instruments for fear of depreciating its value in the future. But there's no doubt Chuck's work has crossed over into art and not just musical instruments. I didn't think Chuck was in this just for the money though he certainly deserves it. One of the things I admire about Chuck is that he wants his instruments to be played. He's weird that way.
P.S. Chuck now makes 5Ks for his base model. Ha ha.
:agree: This, exactly, even though I'd love to have one of Chuck's masterpieces myself some day. I think any artisan that has an extremely long waiting list is overdue to give themselves a raise. It's not about greed, it's about recognition that your work is worth more than you are currently valuing it...and as an artist there is a very finite amount of work that you can produce in your lifetime. You are probably at or near the peak of your career, right now, when one considers the quality of the artistry and the volume of work you can produce in a year. As you get older, the artistry may remain or even continue to improve but you will find that you can produce less and less work of that quality per year...and this will be happening at a time when you may be facing greater expenses (health issues, kids going off to college, etc.).
Any fine craftsman needs to devote as much thought to financial planning as they do to their work. Valuing their work correctly is merely the first step in such planning.
John
Chuck, my friend, I am in tune with this "ukulele market" daily, it's my life. I will risk crossing a line in publicly sharing my evaluation so I apologize if it's not my place but here goes. Raise your prices! Not because you CAN , but because of the value you now offer. This is not an opinion. Your lifetime as a striving artist has brought you to a level that deserves more. It's not hype. I know what's being done in this market and the value of your present quality. I apologize if I should not say this on a public forum but I feel qualified to make these statements and secure in my appreciation.
The eBay buyer here is paying for more than Chuck's beautiful uke. He's paying for time too. Rather than waiting to get on the wait list to get on the build list, they get a Moore Bettah within a week or two.
The eBay buyer here is paying for more than Chuck's beautiful uke. He's paying for time too. Rather than waiting to get on the wait list to get on the build list, they get a Moore Bettah within a week or two.
Wow you seem to really know the seller and Chuck, to speak for them in this way. If the seller did what you think he did, then you also need to think about the risk involved in this. Do you think the seller knew one of the uke he bought would command such an increase in price. Doubt it. Markets can change at any moment, for better and worse.
Bottom line is, wether you agree or not, the uke was purchased and the owner can do whatever they please with it, play it, sell it, throw it in a Bon fire (not recommended).
Personally I have a MB and barring some financial emergency I plan to keep it until I am gone, then I hope one of my children will feel the same way about it as I.
You can't argue with kahuna, he knows everything...
I totally agree. If someone pays what I guess must have been about $ 3500, and can sell it shortly after at a profit of nearly 2k (or more if the original cost was less than 3.5k) then it's time to up the prices. So what if people buy them as an investment. This particular sale was handled in such a way as to maximise profit, and I'd much rather see the builder make that money.
Quite frankly, I really don't understand all the consternation taking place over this EBAY transaction. Someone had a ukulele to sell - a nice one at that - someone purchased it for what the marketplace determined was the fair market price for the instrument - two folks, buyer and seller are now very happy - the transaction worked - end of story. But to get all tied up in knots over whether this seller was possibly doing some kind of cosmic injustice to Chuck's work by buying and sequestering one of his ukes as an investment for a later profitable sale, or whether
Chuck would feel this way or that way about such a possibility occurring and what his innermost motives and feelings are when he builds a uke and . . . . well, it all seems rather silly to me, and you know what they say, everybody is the world's greatest authority on their own opinion