Thanks for all the information here. Some of the ebay deals really look too good to be true! obviously they are!

A lot of cheap Indian made bansuri on Amazon. One was reduced from £12 odd to £0.99!

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You can play beautiful music on an ugly flute
My musical endeavours on my blog

Thanks for this thread and all the information, gents! So hard to find reliable sellers, especially with almost zero experience. Ebay is full of counterfeit items. As it seems that there are even fake Yamaha flutes (even that's not quite on topic), and recently I almost ordered one, but gladly before I hit the button I found out it was a scam
Now I'm choosing an Irish flute for a brother aaaand here we go again - fakes and indian made flutes are flooding the market. Such a pain!

LOL. I've been a victim of the off-tuned, easy-to-crack, cheap ebay flutes. Twice! I belive.

Omg, don't even think about purchasing flutes on eBay, i got it!

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https://primesound.org/best-beginner-trumpet/

Occasionally someone will sell a very nice used flute by a reputable maker on ebay US or ebay Uk. These are often great flutes, sometimes well taken care of, sometimes not. So you need to look carefully at the pictures.

And then there is always the Patrick and Owen Olwell birthday flute. But don't expect anything cheap on ebay to be playable. But you can keep you eyes open for a specific flute, often listed by the maker's name if you are looking for a good used one.

Usually they will go for MORE than you would pay if you got on someone's waiting list for a maker with a long list. So you are competing with people who just don't want to wait on a list.

Though a couple of years ago someone posted the pictures of one of Olwell's birthday flutes and tried to sell it. The Olwell's saw it, confirmed that that specific flute was with it's original owner and not for sale and got ebay to take down the listing as fraudulent. So there is that.

In the last two or three months, as my wife and I have gone off to visit various Flute manufacturers, those with very well-known names, the thing that has amazed me, are the upper end prices on the flutes made of platinum or gold, or a combination of both.

I just can’t personally imagine paying $85,000 for example, for a Flute.

But that’s just me

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I wish I had started learning the Flute when I was young!!

I had a good experience, funnily enough, I thought an £8 dizi was going to be crap, but the one I received seems to play well, (although I haven't tested against a tuner), but tunes I play on it sound quite OK.

Just the luck of the draw, I guess.

(Edit: I was actually expecting it to be rubbish, just thought I'd see how bad.)

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Keith.
Trying to do justice to my various musical instruments.

I'm curious about this eBay listing, because it doesn't look like the usual knockoff eBay flutes that you see around the place:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Wood-Irish-D-F ... SwZbJe4m4w

Also, the listing description is just a copy of this listing, and doesn't seem to be accurate given that the flute would be coming from Denmark (not the Royal Mail) and doesn't seem to come with a case:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hand-Made-Shee ... 0010.m2109

Are there many of these two-piece cheap eBay flutes around? Or might this be a mis-identified flute from a decent maker? I have messaged the seller but gotten no response.

I would note that the seller´s description of the two-piece flute as unbranded-and yet I see something stamped or engraved on the headpiece.

Bob

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Not everything you can count, counts. And not everything that counts, can be counted

The Expert's Mind has few possibilities.
The Beginner's mind has endless possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi

Yeah, I wish the picture was just a bit better quality. Originally when I saw it I thought that just the head was stamped, but on closer examination it looks like the body is as well. It's unfortunately a generic enough-looking stamp that it could say just about anything. Looked at a few of the makers of two-piece flutes that I could think of off the top of my head and Thompson was the closest to it. It actually very much resembles his 2-piece flutes. If I had to guess I'd say it might be one of his.

If so, that's a decent price for a used one, as they're €295 new with silver rings. Of course, if it's what I think it is it's not made of wood, doesn't seem to come with a case, isn't new, and doesn't come in 3 pieces, so the description is completely wrong, but if someone's willing to take a bit of a chance they could pick up what I've heard is a good flute. Without confirmation it's still a risk, and the seller doesn't seem to be responsive at all.

The flute is indeed a flute made by Damian Thompson and the pics are taken from this auction:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/233590737286?_t ... 1758.m4704
That flute was sold by a FB-friend of mine from Scotland (I noticed the pic because I bid on the original auction by my friend but didn't win -- good thing probably, it's not like I needed another instrument). It might be possible that the person who bought it, turned around and sold it again. But the winning bid of the original auction was not the seller offering the one in the link posted by you. Seems a bit odd to say the least but might well be legit.

My take: Run Away. Run Away. This seller joined E-vil Bay March 28,2020. He is not using his own photos. His description is inaccurate and uninformed. This absolutely has to be cleared up before I would risk any money here, even with a ´guarantee´ through Ebay.

Bob

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Not everything you can count, counts. And not everything that counts, can be counted

The Expert's Mind has few possibilities.
The Beginner's mind has endless possibilities.
Shunryu Suzuki, Roshi

Yep, the seller not answering any questions is another red flag. I definitely wouldn't risk it either.

But there must be some good eBay flutes out there...

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You can play beautiful music on an ugly flute
My musical endeavours on my blog