Author: Dutchy
Date: 2006-09-13 13:29
Disclaimer: I am not an oboe expert, just an amateur beginning player.
My understanding is that oboes don't always age well--they tend to develop cracks, and the wood has trouble holding the screws that hold the keys in place--so a 100-year-old oboe isn't necessarily a good deal. There is nothing intrinsically valuable about an old oboe just because it's old. They aren't "collectible", in other words. You can find many old oboes for sale on eBay, and unless they're by a famous maker like Loree, they usually go for a few hundred dollars.
And older oboes don't necessarily sound any better than new oboes. You can draw a parallel with clarinets, which are made out of the same grenadilla wood: would you think a 100-year-old clarinet was automatically going to sound nicer than a new clarinet? Well, it's the same way with oboes. Just because it's old doesn't mean it's going to sound better.
Also, you have no way of knowing just how old the oboe is--he could be lying, just trying to sell you an oboe. Without what the antique dealers call "provenance", which means the paperwork that proves how old an object is, you would just have to take his word for it.
As for whether it's truly an Albert-system oboe, you'd have to know something about oboes in order to determine that. And you'd have to know whether it was in fact wood, and not plastic, which would be a dead giveaway that it wasn't 100 years old :D
Why don't you consult an oboist where you live, have him look at the instrument and tell you what he thinks? Do you play the oboe? Have you played it at all? If not, you should have an oboist play it and tell you what he thinks.
Speaking for myself, I wouldn't waste my time or my money, when there are so many very nice brand-new and modern-but-used oboes out there for reasonable prices. How much were you planning on spending?
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