Be very careful of flutes sold on eBay. I just bought one, regretfully. The head-joint and the tuning barrel came from a different flute than the rest of it. The head and barrel are of blackwood and the rest is cocus. The rings are also different. This was not obvious from the photos, which were fairly good.
Sellers are aware of the demand for 19th. C. block-mounted English flutes and are offering all sorts of garbage. Luckily my seller is sufficiently principled to offer me a refund.
A bad flute is no bargain at any price. If you are looking for a bargain then stick with one of the excellent flute-makers recommended by other players on the forum. The best bargain is a good instrument at a fair price. A good flute may be expensive but there really aren’t any rich flutemakers.
Finally, keys are to the flute as wit is to learning: an enhancement rather than a necessity.
Listen brother, you don’t need to go to the arctic circle to know that it’s cold there. 
You had to know you were in for a gamble (at best) Good thing the seller was kind enough to give you a refund. We live & learn.
What did it sound like?
I just bought a nifty little 6-key flute on Ebay. Maybe a French job? Stamped “D”. Smallish holes, keys in posts. Cleaned up and repadded it plays quite nice, and a beautiful tone too. A bit of a crapshoot, but for $150 I think it paid off.
One thing that drew me to this flute was that it wasn’t trendy - keys in posts, small holes, no bottom C# etc., some cracks in the wood, pinned headjoint. These are things that don’t make the grade with you sessioners, Matt Molloy fans, right?
Good points, all, but I think some flutemakers are pretty rich by now. Olwell has to be, as he has the best business model of the bunch. His greatest profit and revenue velocity are on bamboo flutes, the low end, which can be made in batches. They are priced very high for what they are and the production costs, and still the best of breed for bamboo for Irish music.
His hobby and main interest is the wood flutes–what keeps him grounded in the hippy, crafty world of cool muscians/craftsmen is the fact that he KNOWS he could raise prices 50% on his wooden flutes and still not lose an order. But he feels his prices are fair in that space–and that resonates with people.
He is a case study in entreprenuerialism. He could be richer, but he chooses, like a frenchman or swede might, lifestyle over ever-increasing income.
Well, last time I called up Pat Olwell he still didnt have A/C in his shop and this was at the end of summer…so I think it’s fair to say that he isnt neccesarily rich but enjoys life. Needless to say, I’d pay a good price for any of his instruments.
I don’t know of any simple-system flute maker who could be called “rich” in standard monetary terms. Patrick has a small shop, and his output per year is relatively small–very small compared with Boehm-system flute factories where you’ve got a staff of highly trained (and in most cases well-paid) people churning out flutes in assembly line fashion.
I knew a stringer for the Brannen Brothers flute factory (high-quality Boehm-system flutes) who was making $50K annually about 5 years ago – I’d consider that a good income, but not in the “rich” department. I’d be surprised if Patrick is making even that much. I could be wrong, but look at the math: to bring in $50K (before expenses) you’d have to make one keyless flute every week, or more than 10 bamboo flutes every week, or about 17 keyed flutes a year. Obviously he’s doing a combination of those things, and he does have a helper or two (with whom he must share the “wealth,” of course), but I think it’s unlikely that Patrick or anyone else is going to get rich making simple-system flutes by hand.
Those numbers would all be before expenses too. I would think he would have to double them to get past that and to a “true” 50K a year in take home pay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2367380000&category=10183
This fine keyless Irish Flute is made from beautiful polished Cocuswood with combed brass mounts and tuned to the key of Low-D. It is BRAND NEW, and breaks down into four pieces to fit nicely into the included custom carrying case. The flute has a tuning slide between the head and neck joints, as well as an adjustable cork in the head joint for intonation purposes.
Made in…
Edited to say that it’s a plain keyless 
I think there’s still one or two keyed Ir flutes on Ebay atm, and one of them is very cheap.