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 don't stop playing when you get old, you get old when you stop playing!
My musical endeavours on my blog https://mymusictree.blogspot.co.uk/

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!

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.