Can you sell my piano?

The words I have come to dread hearing the most are: Can you sell my piano?

 Like sets of china, collectible figurines, and heavy dark wood furniture, pianos have, sadly, gone out of style and have become difficult to sell. There are two key reasons:

  1. There are more used pianos available to be sold than there are interested buyers.

  2. As you know from film comedies, it is hard to move a piano!

 Up until forty or fifty years ago, most middleclass or wealthy families bought pianos for their homes. Owning a piano was a sign of success and education, and children all took lessons. I remember how excited my mother was when she moved her childhood piano from Pennsylvania to our home in Virginia. I took lessons for a few years but then realized that I was not cut out for the piano. The piano then just sat in the living room for years, unplayed. Eventually, when our mother sold her house, it had to be discarded.

 Today, few people buy pianos. Many musicians find that synthesizers and keyboards are sufficient. These are less expensive, easier to maintain, and much easier to transport than pianos. Because there has been such a drastic reduction in the number of potential piano buyers, we have a glut of pianos on the market.

 It is also difficult to donate a piano and it takes a lot of time to do so. We once helped a client try to donate her piano to her church. Someone from the church came to her apartment to play it and absolutely loved it. But when it came time to arrange to move the piano to the church, the church said they couldn’t afford to pay for the move. Our client wasn’t willing to spend the money herself, so the donation wasn’t made and the piano had to be discarded.

 Some pianos remain popular. There is a market for used Steinways, for example. But the amount of money you can make from selling a high-end piano is going to be reduced by the cost of moving it.

 We had a client whose wife had been a concert pianist. She had a stunning baby grand in their Park Avenue living room. But, it turns out, the building’s elevator had been replaced in the years since the piano was moved into their home and the new elevator couldn’t accommodate a baby grand. The only option for getting it out of the building was to have it lifted out of a window. The cost for this service was more than the buyer was willing to pay, so the piano wasn’t sold. It had to be taken apart just to get it out of the building.

 Added to the complication of trying to sell or donate a piano is the problem that pianos with ivory keys cannot, by law, be sold. U.S. and New York State both prohibit the sale of ivory.

 The sad truth is that many pianos wind up being discarded. This is always heartbreaking for our clients and we can understand why. A piano is much more than a piece of furniture – it is something with a rich history and happy memories of musical evenings. And, to add insult to injury, there is a cost to have a piano discarded. A professional junk hauler has to be hired to remove it carefully and dispose of it properly.

 Nobody wants to pay for this service, and nobody wants to learn that their piano cannot be sold or donated. It’s very sad to be the person to have to tell clients this news. I wish we had a better solution but, for now, we are left with no good options.

Secrets from the grave

Secrets from the grave…..

 It’s not a topic we love thinking about but, sadly, death is an inevitable part of life. And the truth is that once people die, we become privy to a lot of details about their lives. We sometimes find ourselves uncovering things that the deceased had kept hidden from everyone they know. This is something to think about now. If you were hit by a bus tomorrow, is there anything in your files or drawers that will shock or confuse your heirs?

 When our client Elaine died, she left her son and daughter-in-law a huge apartment to sort and empty. Chad and Jennifer lived in Boston, so they traveled to New York four or five weekends, diligently sorting through everything Elaine left behind, including fifty years of correspondence and greeting cards.

 As they sorted, they came across a box of letters between Elaine and a man with whom she had a twenty-year affair. The affair had started (it seems) after Chad’s parents had divorced, but the boyfriend was married and had three kids when he and Elaine were involved and now he had a handful of grandchildren.

 It is possible Elaine wanted Chad and Jennifer to find out about this relationship. Maybe she always felt guilty about hiding this from them and hoped to clear the air after her death. But she probably did not realize that she would leave them –

in mourning and burdened with the task of emptying her apartment – also suddenly forced to process the fact that she had been in a long-term relationship with a married father of three.

 Chad and Jennifer had to decide whether or not to reach out to the boyfriend. Can you imagine meeting your mother’s boyfriend of many years for the first time after her death?

 And it makes me wonder how they will remember Elaine? Will her secret become the defining aspect of her life? I bet every time they mention her death to a friend, the affair is the first thing discussed. They probably laugh about it a little, but I am certain it is not easy to learn that someone you loved could keep such a big secret from you. How much time have Chad and Jennifer spent re-evaluating their interactions with Elaine and second-guessing their own memories?

 One thing Jennifer told me still haunts me. “You know what really upsets me?” she said. “Chad and I tried, for years, to encourage her to date again. We thought she must be lonely and we were sad that she never met anyone after her divorce. All this time, she was madly in love.”

 It is natural and normal that we all have secrets. Most are not shocking in nature, just things we prefer to keep private. But it’s worth remembering that evidence of those secrets very well may outlive you.

 You have been hiding these secrets for many years, but you will not be present when they are discovered. You will never have a chance to defend yourself, or explain. Angry journal entries written in the heat of the moment may be taken as how you felt every day. Evidence of a youthful one-time indiscretion may define you. You will not be able to apologize.

 You may be thinking that you do not care about this. A lot of people would say: I’ll be dead, so why should I care?

 But think about the grief this could cause the people you love the most. Their memory of you will now be tinged by this secret. And they will not have the option to talk to you about it, so they will have to carry their confusion, and possibly anger, with them for the rest of their lives.

 You may have journals, mementos, or photos in your basement or in the backs of your closet. Take an inventory of them now and make sure that they do not contain anything that could prove distressful for someone to learn about after you die. It may seem painful to discard them, but this could be the responsible thing to do.

 As you think about any of these things you have refrained from sharing with the people you love, you might consider why you have kept it a secret. It’s possible that you will want to share things that you have kept hidden. Better to do this now when you can be part of the conversation.