A bargain at the market
A few days ago I was in the market place, where one of the stalls is a second hand goods one. I always have a look at the stuff he has and have in the past bought things from him at very reasonable prices. I have a lovely microscope I bought from him just the same as the ones I used to use when I was a junior in the lab I worked in.
Anyway, there was a closed box with the name Moeck on it, now I know about Moeck, they are a German musical company specialising in recorders, so I opened it and there was a brand new soprano recorder inside. Then I looked for a price tag and he only wanted £12 for it, charity shops I always overpay, second hand market stalls I usually haggle but this was just too cheap so I paid the asking price.
When I got it home I looked up the Moeck website and the only instrument I could find that resembled this one was a school recorder at about thirty pounds but the description said it was made of plastic.
So I looked at the paperwork that was inside the box and found the name of the instrument that it seemed to be and a warning to play it in a few minutes a day for a couple of weeks, you don't need to do this with plastic recorders so this one is wooden, and if it gets too wet from the water in your breath too quickly, the ramp which is thin can swell and split.
It is a Tuju 223 soprano baroque in maple wood and they haven't made them for about forty years. One sold on Etsy recently at over a hundred pounds so even at a conservative estimate I have a 50 or 60 quid recorder that cost me 12, and even though I am having to play it in slowly, it is nice to play.
