http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=16226&item=3781741281&rd=1
A bargin.
Tommy
That is a bargain! 
Whos’s selling them?
Padger.
Joe list is currently 3 years long - and that’s for a half set. The price seems reasonable too. His rep is growing as a pipe maker.
The vendor seems to be a shop in Nova Scotia - Celts Cauldron. Never heard of them personally, but then I don’t live in NS. I agree with Tommy and PD, it is a cheap price for a good instrument.
It looks like some music shop in Cape Breton. They have a practise set for sale too. Click on the other items. The picture is of a Kennedy set but the price doesnt reflect that.
T
The shop may be selling them on consignment for someone else. Joe doesn’t sell through shops (he learned his lesson). I see the same shop is selling John Walsh’s shuttle pipes. Joe used to sell bellows to Walsh, so maybe that is the link. Anyway, its an unkeyed chanter and drones in cocobolo, probably a couple of years old. The seller doesn’t seem to realize Joe’s prices have gone up as well as his wait time. A good price for some lucky buyer.
djm
I’d be shocked if the practice set is a Kennedy. As a matter of fact, both pictures from that seller are lifted from Joe’s website. At least the half set is represented as a Kennedy - the practice set is “Piper’s Choice,” whatever that means.
Tim
Auction ended early with the Buy-it-now feature.
Another auction, Kennedy half set same seller, buy it now $2,339.95US
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=16226&item=3782164032&rd=1
Looks like they just raised the price.
I wonder, too, if this is a real deal - is it a Joe Kennedy half set and why not post real photos?
From the auction listing, “We in Canada envy the low taxes of our American neighbors.”
Hello Uilleann pipe groupees,
I am one of the owners of The Celt’s Cauldron, which many of you know from our little shop on eBay. I understand there has been considerable doubt about our shop, and I have even received some very rude letters from people lately demanding to know what kind of “game” we were up to. We had no idea what this was about until a person told us there was a great deal of concern about our offerings on this chat site.
I had no idea that offering some pipes would incur such angst. We know they are priced low, but have tried to do the right thing and not scalp people because they are rare. We try to treat people as though they are friends and not devices to wealth (get rich running a music store in Cape Breton, lol). But we are a real Celtic interest store on this island and anyone is welcome to visit us anytime to see our wares or just to chat or ceilidh.
We strive only to carry high quality items so that people can shop with us with confidence. We know lots of eBay stores hawk junk. We absolutely NEVER deal in cheap Asian instruments, or shoddy instruments from anywhere else. The closest thing to an exception are a couple entry level fiddles we carry for children, and even those are decently handmade.
I apologize for having raised the price of the Uilleann pipes a little bit. I discovered that my partner (my wife) had mistakenly miscalculated the direction of the exchange rate between Canadian and American funds and had to adjust. I am also aware of the value of our merchandise, but have chosen to stick closer to the old list prices rather than charge just what the instruments are now going for. I would rather treat a customer like a friend than simply make every penny I can. Maybe it’s bad business, but it’s how I do business.
Photos of the pipes are not shown because they are among the few items we do not stock on premises. After eBay and PayPal get their commissions, and we eat half the shipping to compete with less expensive American freight companies, we see maybe $100US on a $2,500 set of pipes. Because of this, we cannot afford the insurance to keep the pipes here. The pipes are held by a safe and reliable pipe expert. But because of this, we can make no guarantee on the Uilleann pipes availability until they are sold and a depost put on them. They may be sold by request within our shop or elsewhere first. If this is the case, we will cheerily and happily refund a buyer’s money and do our best to help him or her find a replacement. At least one person on your forum has already discovered that we are completely honest about this.
As to the other pipes, I can only tell you what I have read on them from the makers and distributors. I am not a pipe player, so I really don’t know more than that, though I am trying to learn about them. I play whistle, fiddle and Celtic harp–ask me about those, I’ll chat yer ear off. Anyway, about the “Piper’s Choice” practice pipe, my apologies on that one. A review called it the Piper’s Choice and I accidentally wrote it in. A corrected listing is now shown at the Ebay store.
I tell you this because our policy is absolute openness, honesty and reasonable prices on everything we sell. We want shopping with us to be a happy experience for everyone. We want you to know you can trust us. Most of all, we want a person who finishes doing business with us to be a friend in the end. To that end, I am happy to say that not one person has ever returned an instrument to us or complained about our services. If you ever need information on anything we sell, email or call. I usually know about it, and if I don’t, my wife will, and if she doesn’t we’ll find out, and if we get it wrong, you can return or exchange it.
But I do understand that many eBay stores have bad reps for selling cheap junk. It is sad. We do not emulate that business philosophy, and we ourselves have bought some nice things through eBay. In fact, we bought all the business equipment for our shop, except furnishings and a computer through eBay. There are lots of good eBay sellers. Like everything in life, one must use prudence and research when shopping.
In order to establish a more professional online presence, we are currently opening our own WWW presence, at www.celts-cauldron.com. We are also available by phone M-F, 9-5. Currently, it is winter here and we are setting up for spring, so our shop is by appt only, but visitors are welcome. Just call in advance.
Thanks for your time.
Slainte,
Cliff Seruntine
The Celt’s Cauldron
Pictures, along with an accurate description of pipes and their condition (even to its reeding and playability), are essential for success on both sides of the transaction. More information is likely to spur on more bids and we are talking about a transaction for several thousand dollars - a huge investment for the buyer. Using that stock photo of a Kennedy half set was a trigger to wonder if something was wrong with the auction.
This policy is even more puzzling since the premise of an auction is that the goods are owned or controlled by the Seller.
Allow me to add my 2 cents as the person who hit the ‘buy it now’ button on the first auction. I thought they’d be a nice opportunity to try out Joe’s gear and give me something in a sociable key to play with my musical mates (I play in C at home) without a big wait. From my conversation with Joe K. (yesterday), he does indeed still supply the occasional half set to a supplier who in turn resells them to various shops around, and has done so for years. I was in a ‘Celtic’-type shop in upstate NY last November which carries instruments among the plaide kitsch and leprashawneens, and the owner informed me she had just sold a Kennedy half-set to some highland piper. That’s why I wasn’t too worried about the provenance of the pipes in the auction, because I knew it probably wasn’t ‘too good to be true.’ Joe said there’s a number of such sets kicking around, some having been sold and re-sold by various retailers.
I don’t know where the sets in Cliff’s auctions are coming from, but I think what he’s talking about is that his shop is re-selling the half-sets from some such supplier, and that the sale is contingent on the supplier still having them on the shelf, so to speak - essentially the buyer would be placing an order through him, and if the supplier had in the meantime sold them to some other shop, the funds would be refunded. Of course, it would be best if such information were made clear in an e-bay auction, given the anonymity of such exchanges and the level of FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) that can exist, as opposed to walking into a shop and placing an order for something. Nonetheless, Cliff is indeed a very honorable chap. Jitters on my part about the state of the reeds and the vintage of the set, rather than its existence or authenticity, led Cliff to kindly offer to cancel the transaction if I had any doubts, and I took him up on the offer.
It may come as a surprise to some people outside the u-pipe world that quality sets from respected makers don’t generally show up on shop shelves, and that in our little world people want to know exactly where its coming from (preferably from another player or the maker), its history, ‘vintage’ (since lack of standardization means that each maker’s work evolves), and what side of the slope the wood was grown on. Such concerns with ‘authenticity’ are common with all kinds of non-standardized artisanal goods, where outlets of retail distribution are regarded by the afficionado as highly suspect rather than as a guarantee of quality (think Kirstie Alley hawking low whistles for Pier 1). Thus endeth the lecture.
For my part, next time I’ll heed Treebeard’s advice not to be so hasty, booraroom.
Regards,
Mark
Hello Jim,
Again, we know little of pipes here, except that they are hard to find and typically overpriced. When people have had questions about them, we have turned right to the suppliers to get answers. I suppose as I continue to get experience dealing with pipes, I will come to know more about what the needs of pipe buyers are–they certainly are different from the needs of buyers of more standardized instruments such as fiddles, with which we are used to dealing.
However, we deal in other high end instruments, such as harps, which are not standardized and have not encountered these kinds of issues, nor the hostility nor angst. Is it true that there are so many ireputable and fraudulent sellers out there? If so, I had no idea. There does seem to be a lot of angst regarding buying pipes. I had no idea it was such a touchy area. Given that, I think the Kennedy set we just sold will probably be our last. I imagine we will go ahead with our plan to offer Scottish pipes, as I understand those are more standardized.
As to owning or controlling the goods up for auction, we own or control most of the goods in our auctions. Most everything we have for sale, we either stock or make. Yet this is not always the case. A few goods are drop shipped from other makers–we have set up contracts with them. In a few other cases, with items of unlimited supply, we are set up as distributors for those items. In the case of Uilleanns by Kennedy, while I knew their current going rates, I did not know they might be so hard to get and likely to disappear–so those do present a supply problem and will not return to our shelves except by special request.
Surely, you can understand that from a business perspective it is impractical for us to stock these pipes. The mark up is so low I would literally have to lose money to carry them. Or I could scalp customers for them, which doesn’t seem right given the postings in other topics on this chat site about the ridiculous cost of Uilleann pipes. Or I can make an honest few percent off them by not incurring the expense of insuring them in my shop.
So, I imagine the choice is really up to you, the buyers. If you want these pipes very much, I can stock them and raise the price the necessary 20-30% to cover the associated expenses. Or I can try to get you a hard to find item at a reasonable cost.
Given that I net more off a $300 fiddle than I do off a $2,500 set of pipes, from a business standpoint I know what the logical choice is. How I handle that is up to this forum. Your input is appreciated and will help shape our business model.
Slainte,
Cliff Seruntine
The Celt’s Cauldron
Why let this forum dictate how you do business? Not everybody who plays pipes/makes pipes/aspires to play/make pipes belongs to this forum. It’s not a trade union or a regulatory agency. Just a bunch of pipers. If there’s someone who wishes to offer pipes/ act as an agent for pipes from a reputable maker at lower than ‘standard’ price, then go for it. I you want solid advice on the issue - don’t come here. Go to Na Piobaire Uilleann - the Piper’s club in Dublin.
Cheers,
DavidG
I fully support a free market economy. Dealers have sold sets of pipes for many years. Most uilleann pipemakers sell directly to players. Having said that, there are so many aspiring makers out there that selling indirect might be the best model for them.
Fair questions for an auctioned item or a catalog item include: what does the item look like?, what is the exact description - wood, trim, pitch?, what is its condition?, when was it made?, does it have reeds and play?, is the bag in good shape?. Of course, the item has be controllable and deliverable by the seller, unless ‘call for availability’ is in there.
Also, when used items come up for sale, most buyers consult with the maker for insight and advice (and usually clearance to purchase and then send to them for a quick go over). Many uilleann pipemakers have serious wait lists that run from six months to ten years. Joe Kennedy’s wait list is something like three years.
I’d recommend that you try any business model that works best for you.
Joe used to sell through a couple of shops, but the shops couldn’t understand why he couldn’t have a new set to them in two or three weeks when they had sold the current set. After all, Highland pipes can be turned out that fast. 
He pretty much gave up on selling through shops. The majority of Joe’s orders are now flat sets, and yes, the waiting period is three to four years, depending on what you ask for.
Cliff, there is nothing wrong with selling a set used on commission. A lot of people are falling over themselves to get a set without waiting, and will often overpay, but you have to have the details of these sets up front, as others have detailed above. People get picky when they think they are overpaying. 
djm