Postby loud3tone » Sat Feb 09, 2013 4:39 pm
Very sad. Strippers are a plague in the vintage drum world--demand for parts for restorations makes less than collectible-grade drums vulnerable to parting out, because strippers can sell the parts for much more than the whole drums would fetch. All perfectly legal, but over time the result is a shrinkage in the number of intact vintage instruments for players. With vintage drums there is high emphasis on the "collectable-grade" drum, so drums that show some road wear go for significantly less money; this creates the economic incentive for stripping. As a newbie to the Mosrite marketplace I'm surprised that a nicely road-worn Mark I, even a '71, would be worth more in parts than intact, but it looks like that's the case...
On the Rogers Drum Forum there's a thread devoted to tracking drum strippers and raising awareness about them so that sellers can avoid selling to buyers whose practices they don't agree with.