I’ve even had people who said that those binding nub (you know because Gibson is lazy and so they put the binding over the frets and then scrape them down) also contributes significantly to its value. It means if your Gibson don’t have that nub because it’s been refretted, don’t even expect to sell it for more than the price of a cheap fake Chinese Gibson, because it will be seen as that!
It’s why I prefer dealing with expats. Dealing with Taiwanese is like enduring mental torture for peanuts. I think Chinese are much easier to deal with, at least based on buying stuff from Taobao. They answer questions and aren’t bothered by all that. Ask a Taiwanese shopkeeper more than 2 question and it’s meibanfa or whatever.
I was in a music shop recently wanting to try out the Nord Piano/Grand. They won’t even open the box because once the box is open they can’t sell it. All they had was a Nord Stage on display and even then no pedal no stool and they had fucking Japanese pop blasting on the PA. In the end I went to Dunhuang and they were like, welcome to Taiwan. They have a Nord Grand set up with all three pedals and headphones plugged in and a ten percent discount for cash.
