“Unless you know these things, you wouldn’t even know what to look for.” “It’s really like buying a used car,” Mr. Crucial parts can fail and, to untrained eyes and ears, the piano could appear fine. Altenburg said that in past generations, pianos were as central to family entertainment as televisions are today, but as that tradition fades further into oblivion, heirloom instruments often suffer from neglect. But even among those brands, prospective buyers are likelier than ever to find instruments that aren’t worth salvaging. When selecting a used piano, my panelists said, it’s fine to be drawn to the better names, like Steinway, Mason & Hamlin, Chickering, Baldwin and Knabe, among others. and Barb Blair, author of “Furniture Makeovers” (Chronicle), and founder of Knack Studio in Greenville, S.C. Fred Altenburg of Altenburg Pianos in Elizabeth, N.J. My advisers included Amy Tiernan, a piano technician and restoration specialist at Doghouse Pianos in Pawcatuck, Conn. But I’d have endured far less angst, and gotten more piano for my money, if I had listened to the experts before leaping at my “bargain” discovery. My tune is not quite a dirge, I suppose, since this piano is actually an improvement on the troll it displaced from my living room. So gather ’round my 133-year-old Steinway upright, and hear a little ditty about a man with a laptop, a rental van and impulse-spending issues.

And then there’s the guy who actually went out of his way to buy one that’s not worth bragging about. Fewer own one that’s not worth bragging about. Even these days, when cheap secondhand pianos are in plentiful supply, having been tossed aside to make way for compact, sophisticated keyboards, not many people can brag about owning a Steinway.

20 year old kimball baby grand piano