How to Sell a Handpan | 6 Essential Steps

At some point, you may want to sell your handpan. There may be a number of reasons why and I will go to this later. For now, this is a guide on how best to put your instrument up for sale.

How do you sell a handpan? – To get the best price for your handpan, the way to sell it is to first have it retuned; supply lots of photos and most importantly a video of you playing it. Then advertise on respected facebook groups or sell back to the creator.

Read on for the full guide. The best way to prepare it and how to get the best price.

Things to do before putting your handpan up for sale.

There are a few things you want to consider before putting your handpan up for sale. Ensuring that you follow the steps you can assure you will get the best secondhand price available. Please ensure you read the video section as this is arguably the most important factor for a potential buyer.

Have it Retuned

Having your handpan retuned either locally or by the original creator will ensure you can ask the best price for your handpan.

You will find the general advice for buying secondhand handpan its not do so unless the instrument has been recently retuned. Indeed, I advise no one buys a second-hand handpan unless confident it has ben recently retuned, and endorsed by the creator who has done so.

Once retuned it will be in optimal condition for you to make a video recording of you playing to demonstrate the state of the tuning. Again, something buyers will be looking for. I cover videoing a little further down this list

Clean It

Making sure your hand pan is thoroughly cleaned before taking photographs or making a video is providing a service of assurance to the potential buyer.

With second-hand prices remaining strong, the buyer is going to be handing over a lot of money and will want to be fully confident of not wasting their money.

Cleaning your handpan is a simple and quick process. If you want more details on how to clean your handpan thoroughly and make it absolutely perfect for the sale, take a look at my handpan cleaning guide here on site. Just hit the link on that highlighted text there – you already knew that anyway!

Take Some Photos

Taking photographs of your handpan when offering it for sale will help the buyer confirm the condition it is claimed to be in, confirm the brand, note count and other aspects they might be considering.

When taking photos of your hand. Supply as many as you possibly can. Don’t go overboard, around 10 to 12 should be enough. Make sure the lighting is very good at if possible take some photographs outside in natural light.

You won’t need a professional camera as mobile phone cameras are perfectly good enough.

Record a Video of You Playing.

Almost essential these days is a video with you playing the notation around the handpan to prove that it is in tune.

In fact on some Facebook for sale groups, this is an essential element to place an advert. Advertisements for without accompanying videos are often deleted at worst and requested to be listed again with a video, or at best, ignored by potential buyers.

Being able to see and hear the handpan in action is a huge consideration for anyone buying a handpan second hand, so make it as good quality as you can

Se my How to record yourself playing handpan guide’ for hints and tips t make the process easy without the need for expensive video or audio gear.

Advertising Your Handpan For Sale.

Once you have prepared everything above, you will be ready to list your handpan for sale.

I would recommend adding why you are selling. If you don’t you will find it is often one of the first questions that are asked of you.

Your reasons could be anything, but of course, be sure they are genuine. You may already own a handpan and have no need for it. You may want to buy a new or different model and selling your existing instrument will help fund that. You may literally have fallen out of love with it [HOW COULD YOU!], or need to raise funds for another personal reason.

Adding a reason to why you are selling is a selling point in itself.

Explain what model and make it is, adding the year of manufacture if possible, and describe the pan in all its glory, note count, scale, original price paid.

Who Pays for Shipping?

That is entirely up to you, although most commonly handpans are offered for a sale at a price, with the additional shipping costs to be paid by the buyer.

If you are only willing to ship within a certain state, country or distance, then you may be able to figure out what that cost is, add it to the price you want for the handpan, and offer an all-inclusive price including shipping costs. – It’s a clean way of doing it.

Where to advertise my handpan for sale

Arguably the most common place to advertise a handpan for sale now is on Facebook. The old forums are pretty much ghost towns, the wanted ads, will not reach enough people, and in general, most people who know what they are looking for are going to be avoiding eBay and Craigslist like the plague.

Can I sell Back to the Maker?

Don’t ask me! I don’t know! – but in all seriousness, it is a call you can make as they may be interested in buying it back and refurbishing for sale again. Some will, some won’t, but you have nothing to lose in asking. The worst that can happen is that you get a ‘no’

What price should I sell my handpan for?

OK, this is the tricky part, but as a rule of thumb, 75% of the current purchase price is the best guide I can give. In some cases, you will be able to command more, sometimes less.

Around 75% of current new pruchase price is a good guide for selling your handpan in good condition.

See a table of second hand prices and guide here

The one thing to be aware of is that the price of New handpans, have been coming down, and in some cases, that will mean a much lower price than you might expect. I have seen some cases, where players have tried to sell for 25% less than the original price, but find that is now higher than a new instrument form the same maker – That sale is not going to happen, especially if the models are very similar.

You can start a bit higher and negotiate if that’s your want, but again, as a rule of thumb, and given anything over a couple of years old, knock 25% off the current new price and you’ll be in the right region.