Collecting Musical Instruments

The Financial Times recently published an article on the growing interest in collecting and investing in musical instruments.  The article states many of the investors in high end string instruments are the Chinese. It also mentions that individuals collect as well as investment syndicates.

The FT reports

Why collect old fiddles? For those who want to see their money grow, the example of the “Lady Blunt” Stradivarius violin – sold for $15.9m by the Nippon Foundation last year to raise money for tsunami victims – shows what the world’s most perfectly preserved specimens can fetch at auction. Tim Ingles, Sotheby’s head of musical instruments, says that fine period instruments can double their value in ten years, and, with the online auction house Tarisio making the running, the market is buoyant.

And there’s something wonderfully timeless about a violin. As Ingles puts it: “Violin-making is the only branch of engineering to have made no progress over the last three centuries.” Moreover, damaged instruments are relatively easy to repair.

David Rattray, who as the Royal Academy of Music’s luthier (repairer and violin maker) looks after shoals of Strads and other rarities, is aware of the divide between those who love old instruments for themselves, and those who just want to stick them in a vault. With help from Ingles and other sympathetic auctioneers and dealers, Rattray has been assisting at the birth of a collection reflecting a philanthropic musical impulse. The Royal Academy is about to announce that the Becket Collection of period instruments has been donated to the institution – for use by its students – by the collection’s tireless begetter Elise Becket Smith.

Over the past few years, this cello-playing US-born enthusiast has spent her family inheritance acquiring dozens of fine British instruments from the 18th and early 19th centuries. It’s a collection whose sound when played as a consort has a lovely transparency.

Source: The Financial Times