Our attention has been continually called to various schemes to induce unsuspecting purchasers to buy worthless pianos. Buying a piano is a most important matter to many people. Considered intrinsically, the piano is often the most expensive possession of the owners. Involving as it does a considerable outlay of money, we believe that the matter should be given unusual care. We cannot think that any of our readers could be gullible enough to be caught by any catch-penny scheme, but we know that they are coming in contact with many who may be considering the purchase of a piano, and a word of advice may not be out of place.
The only way to purchase a piano is to go about it as you would buy a house or any other expensive property. Induce an expert, a real expert, to pass upon the worth of the materials used in the piano, the workmanship and the reputation of the maker. One of the favorite catch-penny schemes employed in some parts of the country to-day is to publish a puzzle, the answer of which is as obvious as grass in July. The reader solves the absurd puzzle and sends in his reply. He receives in return a reward in the shape of a “Discount Receipt” entitling him to $100 as part payment upon the Bachhoven Piano or some other equally unknown instrument. He may be very shrewd in all his other dealings, but the combination of the fool puzzle and the Bachhoven Piano proposition is too much. He examines it carefully through his stove-lid spectacles, and apparently never dreams that the $100 is a fictitious price added to the asking price for the sole purpose of swindling him. This is only one of endless schemes which seem to be adding to the millions of the gentlemen with cob-web consciences. Perhaps the American people really do want to be fooled. We are told by New York detectives that the “gold-brick” swindle is attempted nearly every day of the year in the “city of a billion lights.”
