I am a proud owner of a Chickering Grand. Serial number 114890 which dates this piano between 1909 -1910. The measurements are 6' 5" long and 4' 10" at widest
point. This Chickering is a bit old, and needs a little T.L.C from a tech. Oh, and yes I am so jealous of Chickering9. Were did you find your new girl?
It was listed on Ebay about 3 years ago. I found it 90 seconds before the auction was to close and didn't even get a bid typed in before the close. I immediately e-mailed the seller and asked him how much outright for it. Price was too good so I went to see it. When I played it, I paid him a few hundred more, to equal the original minimum bid he had sought, though he would have settled for less.
I had looked at about 100 pianos just prior to finding this one and had all but made up my mind to buy a 6'5" Chickering, but when I saw this one the same evening I had planned to sleep on that decision, I decided I could make room for a larger one. I truly liked the 6-5 better than anything I'd tried before this one and could have been quite happy with it. In the end, I'm glad I did a little more looking.
When I was in college, the university had a fleet of new Steinway L's that I loved and a number of much neglected old Chickerings. Those poor old beat-up Chickerings gave me a bad impression of the make, compared to all those Steinways. But after finding myself liking that 6-5 Chickering in a nearby store over a whole herd of Steinways, M&H's and other great pianos, I did a bit of reading during my overnight thinking to cure my ignorance about the make, which is how I ended up on Ebay (following a link) and found the one I ended up buying. The owner of the store that had the one I'd almost bought travelled to see this one with me and was nothing but happy for me even though I didn't buy his.
If you can do your wish list a bit at a time, I think you could find that you really can have a much better piano than the same money would buy new. Chickering resale *is* low, but I think mostly that's because they don't compete with *real* new Chickerings (nevermind those Baldwin pretenders) with prices that would shore up the value of the old ones. Steinways and M&H rebuilds command good prices that make the rebuilder a bit of money because the pianos are still being built and the price for such quality is quite high creating a healthy market for good-value/good-profit rebuilds. But in their day, Chickering were frequently reviewed as "second to none". If the last of the Chickering sons had had a son of his own and the widow not sold the company in 1908 to American Piano Co., Steinway might have yet one more strong competitor besides M&H even now. So while a Chickering might not reward a rebuilder rebuilding on spec with a reasonable profit margin, a Chickering rebuild can offer the owner/player a major reward with a first-rate piano for a fair price and a very good value for ownership and playing.
Topic: What piano do you have?