Selmer Mark VI Gold Plated Tenor Saxophone WHOA MUST SEE!

For sale is an incredible gold plated Selmer Mark VI tenor saxophone.

This horn is an absolutely gorgeous and stunning vintage Selmer serial #167xxx.

This horn is a complete masterpiece drenched fully top to bottom with 24k gold plating!

The gold plated Selmer Mark VI has become somewhat of a mythical unicorn.  There are extremely few original factory examples that have ever surfaced and are a total white whale situation.

While the 1920's had its fair share of gold plated horns, by the time the 1950s & 1960s came the cost of gold was much more costly, and for whatever other reasons its really not typically anything that ever pops up.

As shockingly gorgeous as this Mark VI is, this horn has been gold plated after the factory during a top notch A+ museum grade restoration.

Once again this horn was gold plated after the factory.

There are very few gold plated Mark VIs at all in the world, out of those the vast majority of them were all gold plated after the factory.

This particular Mark VI started its life with no engraving.  The original owner took fantastic care of the horn and explained to me it was an immaculate cherry piece that he held onto all of this time and always wanted a gold plate horn.

Starting non engraved helped make this horn the optimal candidate and perfect canvas to prep for plating and have a final product come out that looks factory appropriate. 

The engraving on this horn is just totally out of this world gorgeous.

If you are starting with a factory engraved Mark VI thats factory lacquered or relacquered , you either have to choose losing depth and feel of the engraving by buffing and plating over with the engraving getting duller then it started OR you can choose to re-engrave the horn to help give the engraving that factory crispness.  The thing is when you re engrave on top of prior engraving it sorta gets that funny looking double wide re engraved traced look... So all that being said this particular horn starting non engraved was perfect for this project as it could be fully prepped for plating, then once engraved, then plated and finished which really is why this horn looks so "factory fresh" authentic looking.

The horn was engraved by famed master engraver extraordinaire Sherry Huntley who is known for this exact thing! 

At that point the horns final prep for plating happened before going out to Anderson's plating.

There are few places in the United States that you can actually get your instrument plated.  Anderson's has been specializing in plating on band instruments since 1948 and are the industry standard for this type of work.

Anderson's only does the gold plating it self.  You need a master repair restoration artist to orchestrate the entire restoration who has experience with the prepping and tapping of the body/parts and understands the full process to prep and hand off to Anderson's.  This is a lengthy process and being the gold process is so costly you could only use the most trusted tech who has experience and can get the job done right.

Anderson's plates a full layer of silver plating to the horn and parts.  They then plate a full layer of 24k gold.  They are using actual 24 karat gold for this plating.  Its very expensive!

After the full gold plating the horn then needs to be put together and receive a full overhaul and pad job completing the lengthy process to making this horn a complete show piece!

Gold plating can be done right and can be done wrong.  There are some cats out there who are gold plating horns in different ways that may be a bit more affordable.  Some of these horns appear to have off colors of yellow gold color.  Im not sure exactly what gold compounds they are using, process, or what kind of gold..  What we do know is Anderson's really is synonymous with this and they are the best of the best at plating band instruments, in the proper way, with the proper materials from a legacy company that cant be beat.

The work done on this horn is absolutely top notch, we have personally never seen a Mark VI tenor gold plated horn as nice as this one.

As beautiful as the horn is in the hands it really cant even touch how this thing looks in the hands viewing it with your own eyes first hand seeing the shimmer gold sheen dance with the lighting in the room.

Its one of those things that photo's just dont do it justice.  As amazing as it looks in the photos, there really is this particular lustrous gold reflectant sheen thats just gorgeous to take in the eye and does not fully translate to the photos.

Our photo lights are very bright and the horn is very shiny and reflective which makes it hard to capture true color.

Again its very rare to find any gold plated horn, but if you follow these things, it seems the only gold plate horns that really come to market are these sorta 'hack' jobs done many years ago that just dont cut the muster as a top tier piece.

This horn is a museum grade collection piece that will be a fantastic gold plated Mark VI acquisition for any player or collectors collection.  You can feel confident that out of the small pool of these types of things this horns work is artisanal level!

Its very rare to see work like this and its a very costly thing to get done.  If you were to get a job like this done today you would be talking $10,000+  cost, and that could easily be more..  Gold is very expensive these days and the work is not cheap to get done.

When looking at modern Selmer Paris prices you can get a feel for how expensive gold plated tenors are very expensive.

The 54JGP series II gold plated tenor & the 62JGP Series III gold plated tenor retails for some $33,000.   These are made to order custom horns that can take 6 months to build....      In the end these are just S80s and are nothing compared to a collectible Mark VI!

This horn is very valuable however it is still a used piece and does have some various surface scratching, smudging, knicks, dings, fleabites, metal wear, plating wear, tarnish.  Overall the condition really is very nice, however in the end this is still a used piece of metal and not a brand new production piece.

I have personally looked far and wide for gold plated Mark VIs for a very long time.  Your lucky to find any but most often when they show up they typically can have a problem like bad restoration or a pickup on the neck, missing parts, bad neck, etc, etc.

This horn here is all there just as should be!  The full sax is prim and proper.  There are no pickups, heavy trauma, theres no missing parts or major things to write home about.  That condition paired with gold plate and the overall look and feel of this horn make this a very rare piece.  Bottom line we have never seen a gold plated Mark VI tenor this cherry nice!

This horn is a 1 out of 1 horn, when it is gone its gone forever into the next persons hands, so if you have been looking for a gold plated Selmer showpiece please buy and pay confidently we will ship ASAP upon payment!