It's like owning a piece of marimba history. Once you have a new marimba, you don't need another new one. Although I see your point, the price of an old used marimba would make a nice down payment on a new marimba. Especially when you look at the range of the King George on ebay for example. It only goes down to F below middle C. If I didn't already have a 5 octave marimba, I wouldn't even consider paying that much for such a "small" marimba.